Remember the art-damaged absurdity of the Nina Harker (not a person btw) LP from a few years back? The good news for those with a fond recollection of that record is that one half of that mysterious outfit, Apolline Schöser, is back here as KOU (alongside, i'm duly informed, a host of other performers, most prominently Thomas Coquelet) and in consistently perplexing form, no less. There's some differences between the two projects, sure, but the muse remains roughly the same - Schöser and co. enjoy fucking around and with the audience's expectations. If the main focus of that Nina Harker record was European underground tape culture, then with KOU it's avant folk that becomes the subject of that same bent sideways thinking, not too dissimilar to Blöd's debasing of traditional song as some kind of veiled critique of neoliberalism/the (post)modern world. I can't say whether KOU share the same intentions, but there's a spirited wrong-headedness at play across these 15 fragmented tracks that's good at making the familiar sound less so - where else might a rendition of 'Blue Moon' engender such a disorientating sense of magic realism (this certainly isn't the same song that soundtracked Ricky Hatton's ring walk)? This is the kind of music making that might have ended up on the NWW list, or if not, then at least have studied it intently, steeped as it is in experimental impulses and left-turn surprises that are as frequently addicting as they are head scratching. It's sometimes as if a tape recorder was placed in a corner of a room and turned on and off intermittently whilst the players carried on unaware, music verite style. Some have drawn connecting lines to Faust, which is a perfectly reasonable assertion, transmitting a similar cultish sensibility, of remote creative indulgences that challenge the listener as to just how far they want to go with them. Take the plunge if you wanna see how weird it can get out(/in?) there...
