Hands In The Dark revisit the archives of Tom Relleen for the debut by Melos Kalpa, the outfit he formed in 2019 alongside Agathe Max, Jem Doulton, David John Morris and producer Marta Salogni. Though tragic, Relleen's story remains an inspiring one, an artist now more active in death than most are while alive, and it's remarkable just how high quality his posthumous output has been. Melos Kelpa doesn't add anything especially revelatory to our understanding of him as an artist, but it does provide another stellar example of his sustained interest in the avant garde. Here the focus is upon aleatoric composition - or 'non-intention', as it's labeled in the press release - and the combination of lesser seen instrumentation, marimba, vibraphone, mandolin and Buchla Music Easel amongst them, an approach that feels deeply rooted in improvisation and intuition, and relies heavily on trust and understanding between the five musicians. There's a notable psychedelic quality to these five tracks, but none so more than on the closing 22 minute+ 'Melos Rhythm', a winding, near-spiritual journey through european folk, krautrock, drone and a kind of spooked post-rock dynamism. It's simple enough to make connections with Tomaga, one of Relleen's other genre-agnostic groups, though it also feels as if they're plugging in directly to that ancient European tradition of experimentation that feels especially alive again right now - you can partially thank their label Hands In the Dark for that, and the kinship with the likes of Oren Ambarchi, Holy Tongue, Memotone, Piotr Kurek et al is clear to hear. Whatever way you look at it, Relleen and people he was able to connect with, remain an undisputed inspiration.
