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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 5, 2016
KAYO DOT ANNOUNCE ‘PLASTIC HOUSE ON BASE OF SKY’
New LP out June 24 on The Flenser
"a refined, and sensual, post-new wave tour de force" - Echoes & Dust
“…a hypnotic blend of sensuous grooves, ghostly heaviness and knotty melodies ..." - Time Out New York
Kayo Dot has never made the same record twice. From chamber music to progressive black metal, from goth to jazz and avant-garde classical, Kayo Dot is undeniably experimental and utterly unclassifiable. Since its inception in 2003, the band has released seven full-length albums, including their debut Choirs of the Eye (2003), the conceptual double-album Hubardo (2013) and most recently Coffins on Io (2014, The Flenser). Kayo Dot have toured the globe numerous times over and have played the stages of Roadburn, SXSW, and many other international music festivals. In 2015, frontman Toby Driver organized and played a 12-concert retrospective at The Stone in NYC. Now, Kayo Dot is gearing up for the release of a new LP: Plastic House on Base of Sky, due out June 24th, 2016 from The Flenser.
On Plastic House on Base of Sky, Kayo Dot fully embraces Coffins on Io's electronic allusions, incorporating a variety of synthesizers (many of them vintage analog) to create another work of ambition and magnitude that fuses the explosive musical imagination of a band like Magma with the forward-thinking experimentalism of Conrad Schnitzler or Morton Subotnick. This 40 minute-long, 5-song LP goes beyond the future-noir theme of Coffins on Io and is an innovative and biomechanical work of art. Think seemingly impossible architecture, dead satellites, trashed space stations, wasted old lady heroin addicts hanging out by cheap motel pools, broken people, and a hopeless dead and polluted world transitioning into artifice and mechanism and reacting by being self-destructive, either to the point of utter obliteration or a glorious transhuman condition.
Toby Driver, the primary composer and bandleader of Kayo Dot, has been fiercely productive over the years, and while that usually refers to how many songs or albums an artist has made, with Driver the productivity is in the realm of ideas as much as music itself. In the course of a single Kayo Dot song, the amount of risks and liberties taken with form and convention usually outnumbers what other artists cover in a full album. For as much ground as they cover, it's always in the service of a carefully curated mood and this is apparent on Plastic House on Base of Sky's exploration of our mechanical post-human future-present.
The core of Kayo Dot might be that mood– one that lies at the crossroads of darkness and mystery. In film, music that accompanies mystery is often nocturnal, playing on a primal relation in our brains between the unknown and the night. It's this intersection that is the essence of Kayo Dot. Driver, who recorded Plastic House on Base of Sky in various locations from August 2014 to December 2015, again collaborates with lyricist Jason Byron. Byron, a lifelong student of the occult, gives the listener a feast of words to unpack that are as elusively satisfying as the labyrinths of sound they travel through. Whether by way of menacing guitars, ethereal woodwinds, or aggressive electronics, there's always a sense that a new passage could open, that around the next corner could be anything.
Song premieres, pre-orders and more info on Plastic House on Base of Sky coming soon from Kayo Dot and The Flenser.
Plastic House on Base of Sky Track Listing:
1. Amalia's Theme
2. All The Pain in All the Wide World
3. Magnetism
4. Rings of Earth
5. Brittle Urchin
Stream or buy our past releases at our Bandcamp page
OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY:
Kayo Dot has never made the same record twice. To read various descriptions from magazines and reviews, you might feel like you couldn't be reading about the same band. From chamber music to black metal to goth to jazz and avant-garde classical -- nothing really fits. Is Hubardo the "true" Kayo Dot? Is Coffins on Io? Choirs of the Eye? Does the question need an answer?
Toby Driver, the primary composer and frontman for the band, has been fiercely productive over the years, and while that usually refers to how many songs or albums an artist has made, with Driver the productivity is in the realm of ideas as much as music itself. In the course of a single Kayo Dot song, the amount of risks and liberties taken with form and convention usually outnumbers what other artists cover in a full album. That's not to say Kayo Dot doesn't have an impressive catalog. Neither is the band jarring the listener from one absurd extreme to another just to prove a point. For as much ground as they cover, it's always in the service of a carefully curated mood.
The core of Kayo Dot might be that mood, one that lies at the crossroads of darkness and mystery. In films, the music that accompanies mystery is almost always nocturnal, probably playing on some primal relation in our brains between the unknown and the night time. It's at this intersection that one is most likely to nail down what Kayo Dot is all about. Driver still collaborates with former maudlin of the Well bandmate Jason Byron, with Jason handling lyrical duties. Byron, who is a lifelong student of the occult, gives the listener a feast of words to unpack that are as elusively satisfying as the labyrinths of sound they travel through. Whether by way of menacing guitars, ethereal woodwinds, or alien electronics, there's always a sense that a new passage could open, that around the next corner could be anything: a beast or some figure of erotic desire.
Kayo Dot have played the stages of Roadburn and SXSW. In 2015, Driver organized and played a 12-concert, career-spanning residency at The Stone in New York. Kayo Dot records have appeared on labels as diverse and distinguished as Hydra Head, The Flenser, and John Zorn's Tzadik. With the release of 2016's Plastic House on Base of Sky, they take a decidedly electronic turn, incorporating a variety of synthesizers (many of them vintage analog) to create another work of ambition and magnitude that fuses the explosive musical imagination of a band like Magma with the forward-thinking experimentalism of Conrad Schnitzler or Morton Subotnick.
Everything is fluid. The only constant is change. You can't step in the same river twice. Many people hold these truths to be self-evident. As these ideas become even more more commonplace, it only makes sense that musicians should defy the demand to answer the question "Who are you?" The refusal to answer is, in a way, the best answer possible. Kayo Dot is what that refusal sounds like.
– Joshua Strawn