Cassette
Koude, the Dutch trio of Michiel Klein, Keimpe Koldijk and Ester Venema, debut with a self-titled six song cassette of purgatorial improvisations built around guitar, alien electronics and muted voice and percussion. It is a particularly sunken type of sound they make together, minimalistic in form but rich in strange atmosphere, caught within a lysergic fog of depressed dissonances reminiscent of the slow-moving, haunted half-song of Eyes of the Amaryllis and Maths Balance Volumes. It's funny to think that Klein, who also runs Minorie, once played in Lewsberg, for a very different itch is being scratched here, digging into that deep vein of post-industrial otherness that girders much of the European underground. There is little concession to traditional song form or even really any sense of clarity (song titles like 'Terminal Bloom' and 'Wrong Body of Water' reveal a lot in how little they reveal at all), though the results are unusually ornate and captivating, the feeling of having walked in on some form of magikal offering unfolding unto the world. I won't try to fully understand it, and I'll continue to enjoy it immensely because of it. In those shadows there lies meaning.
FFO: People Skills, Maths Balance Volumes, Loren Connors/Suzanne Langille, Eyes of the Amaryllis
