Kairos 114, 6 February 2020 Concertzender

What is that?, we can hear you say, are you cheating? Where's January 2020? Well, it seems .No took a little holiday as the January 2020 Kairos turns out to be the January 2018 Kairos. So, no, our Wo. is not cheating you out of anything. Here is what could be heard in January: http://wonomagazine.blogspot.com/2018/02/kairos-january-2018-by-no-on.html. Having made sure there is complete transparency, we editors hand over to Wo. and his experience with the latest Kairos.

The familiar opening notes change into a somewhat difficultly sounding jazz acoustic guitar. With the light jazzy drumming in the background to go with it. What makes it somewhat difficult for me is that the guitar is played in a classical kind of way with jazz like accents and an accompaniment that doesn't go with the classic. The music is by the Isbin Trio and is called 'Yes Love'. The third musician plays a bass and gets a solo along the way. Also never something quite frivolous. 'Yes Love' is for people with an acquired taste and unfortunately that excludes me.

A piano moves in and is not a part of the trio, that much is certain. Rutger Zuydervelt returns to Kairos with two pieces from his work 'Machinefabriek'. You will see his name mentioned three times in a row in the index of the show but two works get morphed by .No. The piano tinkers slow notes, a machine is mixed in there. This is very experimental were it not Zuydervelt's composition is already over and the piano playing is by Ella van der Woude.

A week ago her album 'Solo Piano' was reviewed in full on this blog. This is the first single from the album, 'Bye Bye Little House'. The music was composed literally to say goodbye to a small apartment where she used to live in Amsterdam. All sorts of birds and other sounds can be heard. Van de Woude or .No? Your guess.

The change to the next section is stunning. All sorts of nature sounds and different birds can be heard. For six and a half minute we hear a fragment of Broeder Dieleman's ode to the Gat van Pinten, a creek in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen where he loves to go when given the chance.

Gat Van Pinten is mixed with a track by Sam Lee, 'Balnafanen'. This track from 'The Old Wow' album sounds like an old folk song recorded in a way troubadours of old could not imagine nor fathom. Stately, slow and almost with music as played in the traditional sense on a song like this. Just a sparse chord or note and ever so slowly swelling atmospheric sounds are mixed into the whole. Only nearing the end, the song becomes truly more than Sam Lee's voice thanks to strings and then a horn that enters the whole. It make the song nearly something different from what it started out as. Yet it is not and that is the power of Sam Lee's creation.

Readers of my Kairos "reviews" will recognise the name Harrold Roeland by now. This time the contribution is called 'Klankschalen (staat 1) Bloemenveld'. A dark sounding cello carries a dark melody but is it Roeland? Most likely it comes from Tears|Ov. A dark song this is for sure. Sung dark, two notes repeated over and over. Somehow it is impressive. Like an obstacle on the road that is not wise to pass, better to turn around.

Nick Cave breaks into Tears|Ov with another track from his 'Ghosteen' album. The Ghosteen is his son who did not get past the age of 15 when he fell to his death from a cliff near Brighton while under influence of a hallucinogenic drug. The sadness is everywhere on the album and yet there is some sort of hope coming from 'Bright Horses'. His baby is coming back to him, although it is hard to explain, as he sings.

Somehow .No manages to mix 'All Else Is bondage (For A.) with the violins of 'Bright Horses' and who knows what else I'm hearing in the sounds that do not seem to belong in the stately Tears|Ov song. The way the two artists come together is impressive. Will they ever hear this? You never can tell.

Fink is also allowed to return. His impressive past three albums have all been posted on over the past few years. 'That's How I See You Now' is as mysterious a song as the previous two were. They fit together, despite being different in many ways. Fink who from being a dance producer, started to mix electronics with folk songs has moved more and more into atmospherics where many parts of a traditional song have been stripped away to make room for soundscapes. These are slowly being swept to the side when the song turns into a more and more impressive piece of work. The, almost predictable, explosion into a rock anthem does not happen though. The guitar shapes mixed into the semi-background on record, in the studio may have been extremely loud, here they are just little nuisances in the background, hinting at what 'That's How I See You Know' could have been with a band like ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead. Fink is not like that, but strangely enough not that far removed.

A more traditional song starts. A percussively played guitar, muted chords. Kevin Meisel plays a singer-songwriter song without complex guitar patterns being repeated over and over. Just the muted chords. An violin intermezzo joins in. They sound too belonging to be a .No mash up. Yes, I like the Meisel song I find. Having never have heard of him, it is an artist to check out. Especially the beautiful flowing violins contrast beautifully with the tight and elementary guitar playing. This is simply very well done, despite the fact it is often the producer who comes up with ideas like this.

Trondheim Voices return to Kairos once more. Usually the moment I go into hiding. For sure this is art in music but like a lot of things in this world not one I necessarily need to get acquainted with. Experimentation with sounds and voices without any structure is not the reason why I listen to music. There will be people who do enjoy this so I will allow you to do so without getting in your way any further.

Okay, 17 minutes? That could become an extremely long haul. Let's see or better, hear. The beginning is sounds, a bleating something, probably goat, a violin doing not much more what could be tuning or warming up, atmosphere and a lone horn or trumpet calling out again and again together with another instrument that may be a clarinet playing dark notes. Let me try and get into the mood and close my eyes.        😯                After a while I open them again. also because the modern world calls out to me through one of the devices in the room. The Trio Ramberget is playing 'C dur-Bete'. A few notes are repeated over and over basically. A cello joins the whole while for the whole time there is some sort of percussion in the background but never in the traditional sense. While the horn/trumpet expands a few notes ever so slowly into its playing, the strings become ever more louder and near dissonant. Concluding I can write that no, I will never listen to 'C dur-Bete' again, but am glad to have heard it. As a whole it is far beyond my comfort zone, but it is easy to imagine the central melody of the horn turning up in a new Sophie Hunger song, but also in a remake of 'Dead End Street' by The Kinks. Imagination goes a long way, folks.

The 'Machinefabriek' returns for a fourth and final contribution in this month's Kairos through a piano. Ever so slow notes take over the from the long composition. Strange sounds hover in the background, like a poltergeist interfering with a television show in a 70s horror movie.

Not for long though, because .No returns to his home grounds with the Limburg accent of Jack Poels. This week the Rowwen Heze singer releases his first solo album, 'Blauwe Vear'. 'Elf Oaver Elf' is a singer-songwriter song in a U.S. tradition. The song seems to be so simple and elementary, yet it seems to have it all. More than a few chords and a story is all a nice song seems to take. And after living through 17 minutes of experimental, yet melodic music, just now, Jack Poels comes as a soothing consolation to my brain.

Wo.

You can listen to this Kairos here:

https://www.concertzender.nl/programma/kairos_542480/

This is the playlist:


00:07-04:20  Gilbert Isbin. Yes Love. Isbin Trio. Album ‘Yes Love’. Tern Records.
04:01-04:59  Rutger Zuydervelt. Sol sketch 2. Machinefabriek. Album ‘Sol Sketches’. Self-released.
04:29-06:13  Rutger Zuydervelt. Sol sketch 3. Machinefabriek. Album ‘Sol Sketches’. Self-released.
05:39-06:37  Rutger Zuydervelt. Sol sketch 2. Machinefabriek. Album ‘Sol Sketches’. Self-released.
06:26-09:49  Ella van der Woude. Bye Bye Little House. Single. Snowstar Records.
08:19-14:43  Broeder Dieleman. Gat van Pinten II (fragment). Album ‘Komma’. Snowstar Records.
11:33-16:55  Sam Lee. Balnafanen. Album ‘The Old Wow. Cooking Vinyl/V2 Records.
15:42-18:10  Harrold Roeland. Klankschalen (staat 1) Bloemenveld. Album Ceres (OST). Self-released.
17:36-23:09  Tears|Ov. All Else is Bondage (For A.) (fragment). Album ‘A Hopeless Place’. The Wormhole/Modern Matters.
20:16-25:08  Nick Cave. Bright Horses. Album ‘Ghosteen’. Ghosteen Ltd.
24:55-25:00  Nick Cave. Bright Horses (fragment). Album ‘Ghosteen’. Ghosteen Ltd.
25:00-29:59  Tears|Ov. All Else is Bondage (For A.) (fragment). Album ‘A Hopeless Place’. The Wormhole/Modern Matters.
25:21-25:34  Nick Cave. Bright Horses (fragment). Album ‘Ghosteen’. Ghosteen Ltd.
27:27-27:40  Nick Cave. Bright Horses (fragment). Album ‘Ghosteen’. Ghosteen Ltd.
27:40-33:35  Fink. That’s how I see you now. Album ‘Bloom Innocent’. R’Coup’D/DGR.
33:05-37:40  Kevin Meisel. No easy undertaking. Album ‘Coal and Diamonds’. Thursday Records OMC 0019.
37:17-39:43  Trondheim Voices + Asle Karstad. Below/Ritual#4. Album ‘Rooms & Rituals’. Grappa LC49093.
38:33-55:59  Trio Ramberget. C dur-Bete. Trio Ramberget (Johanna Ekholm, Gustav Davidsson, Pelle Westlin). Album ‘Musik att somna till’. Self-released.
54:35-58:37  Rutger Zuydervelt. Sol sketch 5 (fragment). Machinefabriek. Album ‘Sol Sketches’. Self-released.
56:51-59:57  Jack Poels. Elf oaver elf. Single. Snowstar Records.

or listen to our Spotify Playlist to find out what we are writing about:

https://open.spotify.com/user/glazu53/playlist/6R9FgPd2btrMuMaIrYeCh6?si=KI6LzLaAS5K-wsez5oSO2g