| Clue to Kalo's new album, One Way, It's Every Way, is the type of thing you might hear if you were losing your mind in a lovely wilderness setting. Their music is dizzying, and their lyrics read like a stream-of-consciousness writing exercise: "Though friends lie and deny that their even afraid/It's easy to hear it in everything they say/Still, the small miracle you met them out of everyone/Is to hold in your head at the point that your done." What? These are a people with a love for language and no commitment to sense. The music comes in on a cloud of disjointed dreaminess; it's made up of whispered vocals and various electronic skitterings and chirps. While One Way... owes plenty to hippy dreamy "listen to what the flower people say" music, it can be deceptively complex. That veneer of sleepiness hides quicksilver changes underneath. The endings of tracks are often so radically different from the beginnings as to be unrecognizable, yet it's difficult to pinpoint where they change. It's tricky, smart, and strikingly original. I first heard Clue to Kalo (aka Mark Mitchell) on a compilation of electronic uneasiness called Delivery Room. That commp (on The Leaf Label, highly recommended), along with the work of Matmos, fits into a strange mini-genre. It's not beat-oriented but it's not exactly ambient. It manages to be simultaneously unnerving and peaceful. Call it pastoral electronic. I happen to like it, but it's so distinct from anything else that it's difficult to assimilate. There aren't many ordinary situations that call for Clue to Kalo. They may be ahead of, or slightly beside, their time. - Alarm |
1XLP/Out Of Print