CD Feature/ Kioku: "Both Far and Near"

Who or what is the devil? To some people, it’s impurity. They should try to stay clear of “both far and near”. From the darkness of smoke-filled late-night bars, from threedimensional Jazz memories of New York, from the mist-covered silence of a Japanese Zen temple and a teetering and hollering street parade on a tiny island in the South Pacific, Kioku have destilled a raw and futuristic vision of what the absurd term “World Music” can mean in the hands of those who shun the main streets, staying close to the pulse instead.

To arrive at such a sound, the trio has taken everything it likes about the here and now and infused it with oraculous murmors from long-gone times of glory: John Coltrane whispers from the grave in the eleven-minute “The Drum Thing”, a phantasmagorically pussyfooting trip into percussive timbres and sleepwalking sax, while Keith Jarret’s “Spirits 16” (from 1985) closes the album with polyphonic lines meeting at moments of bewildering harmonic confluence. In between, the ghosts of the past haunt the dreams of Korean prayer songs and pieces to accompany Shinto practices.

Improvisation, Jazz, Sound Art and traditional Asian music are the basis to “both far and near”, its title already openly referring to its long list of influences. It is not so much that the result from this mixture defies categorisation, but rather that no prefixed label could ever come close to describing what to expect. Maybe that is also the reason why Kioku have decided against signing with a regular or even progressive Jazz outfit and instead opted for Austin’s Quiet Design, whose still compact catalogue of five releases has already covered contemporary composition, electropop, experimental steel drum collages and amplified microsound.

Instead of wanting to be analysed, the album consequently begs to be experienced. Structures on “both far and near” are curved and bent to the extreme, arrangements marked by an organic balance between Wynn Yamami’s percussion, Ali Sakkal’s Horn erruptions and the noise textures flowing from Christopher Ariza’s machines – even though its lineup is as up-to-date as possible, Kioku have created a unique sound that smacks of the street and exotic mysteries of faraway countries. Despite the various parts each piece is made up of, the group maintains a furious energy level on most of the tracks, shattering each notion of confusing complexity with their powerful propulsion.

For an album so obviously impure and open to technological advances, “both near and far” sounds remarkably cohesive. Ariza’s seminal influence on the band’s sound mostly becomes apparent only on a second listen and is seldomly as apparent as on the acid groove of “Binalig” – instead, he transforms cymbal rushes into glistening pads, forces drums to digitally supercollide and adds cut-up field recordings. What is real and what is processed becomes irrelevant in an environment, in which sound can simply be sound and each musician is free to take on whatever position seems most complementary to the piece at hand.

There is a German saying which claims that the devil hides in details. If that be so, then he must have found a new home here. Behind each stroke of the Taiko, a soft wind strokes the ear’s membrane, behind every improvised sax solo lurks minutely planned structures. On the other hand, it is hard to believe that something this good should be so bad - Impurity certainly sounds pretty heavenly on “both far and near”:.

Homepage: Kioku
Homepage: Quiet Design Records