MUSIC REVIEW: KIEV - 'BE GONE DULL CAGE & OTHERS' EP | buzzinemusic.com
MUSIC REVIEW: KIEV - 'BE GONE DULL CAGE & OTHERS' EP
A Deceptively Small Indie Offering of Experimental Swagger & Grace
(Kiev Music) Be Gone Dull Cage and Others is the second EP from LA outfit Kiev, and like their first issue, Aint No Scary Folks in on Around Here, this is a much bigger offering than the usually short format would suggest. Here, a three-track EP weighs in at almost twenty minutes long, and content is every bit as dense as it is long.
The continuity established across this second release extracts forms that were experimented with on the first EP -- song titles and some lyrics, cut-and-paste grammar, and stream of consciousness to sweet effect. Associations, reflections of inverse imagery, and unusual archetypes float, chop, drop, and tease. Robert Brinkerhoff has the kind of voice that emerges from some kind of genetic depth. There's volume, but it's not just loud. There's a purity, but it's not contrived. At times, as you're following a track like “Small Kid / Big Tree” -- “The big hands reached out to pull through you / The big hands reached down to confuse you...” -- definition drops away, but you're in the mantra, and it's working. Literal meaning is no longer the primary concern. The voice is simply another instrumental element. Sense, not certainty, is in order. Or disorder.
Instrumentation toys with bewildering extensions of jazz-rock progressions, but Kiev tempers tunes with expert control and so avoids falling into the indulgences of jam-band territory. What The Doors did with harmony and discord, and what Radiohead expresses with tripped beats and glitched hooks, so Kiev achieves with an organic twist; the results are less experimental and more naturally exploratory. If former bands were at the self-conscious aspect of cutting edge, Kiev simply grew up in the lab, apparently unaware of restrictions. They are standing on the shoulders of giants, but they're pirouetting up there too. All of this divine madness is contained in the producer's booth by Darrell Thorp -- a man who must have radar for a heart. The scale and essence of these songs is so sympathetically trimmed, it's like he made topiary bushes of an entire forest.
Previously mentioned “Small Kid / Tall Tree” closes the EP with over seven minutes of suspense, pay-off, and smooth groove. A track that details scale and wonder spreads itself out and passes all manner of electronic beeps, beats, and flourishes. This is a contender to retroactively soundtrack ancient fairy tales for modern times. It inspires you to explore all root systems or rob a bank, or something. There is a very unusual effect in this track; it grounds the ears in art. There are some bands who hammer a point home with a traditionally sounding 'farewell' or a self-consciously obscure treatment devised by some ill-advised producer. For all their eagerness of assertion, they mistake gimmick for hook. Kiev makes no such mistake -- they simply undersign all that has gone before with a gently barbed signal of understatement.
For all the high-end pop-culture on display, the most refreshing element of Kiev, both on this EP and during live performances, is the desire to bring grace to swagger and swagger to grace. “3rnd” -- the middle track of three here -- is groove, all groove, and nothing but groove. Yes, there is sampled birdsong, there are delicate deviations from straight or even alt-rock, but this stuff is just foot-stomping, hand-clapping stuff. The chops are sweet and melodic; the rhythm bounces like internal rhyme. Where other experimental artists appear stiff and serious, Kiev is never too far from flat-out fun. Their art does nothing to inhibit. You need to be cool, not hip, to gain access to the dance floor.
With Be Gone Dull Cage and Others weighing in at only three tracks long, there could be an argument that Kiev is holding back -- that they should be offering more. That's just listener-greed speaking. There's a very real sense that the first EP was an introduction to the assault. This second EP is a testing of range. Sniper sights are being set, the heavier artillery is being assembled, and Kiev seems bent on deploying when, and only when, they are utterly convinced of victory. Given the ordinance on display so far, that can't be very long now.
Standout Tracks: "Small Kid / Tall Tree", "3rnd"
For Fans Of: The Beta Band, Radiohead, Kasabian
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