Kindzadza - Insoluble

[Rotwang]

Kindzadza - Insoluble (Osom Music)

 

 

Press Release:

 

OSOM MUSIC proudly presents its worldwide audience with a third solo album of KINDZADZA. New INSOLUBLE album contain 9 mystery messages to charge yours imagination with psychedelic power and spirit. We wish you pleasant surf in a stream of sounds. Love is the message. Peace to you all!

So then. New Kindzadza album. Writing this review will be somewhat difficult for me, not least because (as some readers probably will have noticed) I'm something of a massive fanboy and will have a tough time keeping up the pretence of objectivity. But also because this is just not the sort of music that lends itself easily to written description, even more so than abstract electronic music generally. When trying to explain what a sequence of other-worldly noises sound like there's not much one can do but compare it to other sequences of other-worldly noises the reader may have already heard, and in this case nothing quite fits. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that this CD is some kind of quantum leap; it's full of recognisable elements of Kindzadza's earlier works as well as some obvious external influences, and it's still dark psytrance. But overall it doesn't fall into any existing templates or subsubgenres or current trends. Anyway, it's been a few weeks and nobody else has written a review yet, so I'll give it a shot.

 

 

Tracks (click titles for Saiko Sounds sample):

 

1) Data Mining 7:37

 

The album kicks off with a pretty standard opening track. That's not to say it sounds like anything you've heard before (it doesn't), but it does do that opening track thing of letting the listener know what the rest of the album will sound like without really going anywhere, like the musical equivalent of a movie trailer. Many nice sounds to be heard but every time it seems like it's building up to something big it just kind of peters out.

 

2) Dreamcatcher 7:23

 

This one starts very nicely, and keeps driving forward with one of Kindzadza's trademark powerful basslines. Unfortunately the latter half of the track is dominated by some metallic-sounding buzzing noise of the sort that's been used a lot in darkpsy in recent years, and which is fairly horrible. KDD is, in my opinion, the absolute master of timbres, so it's a shame that he chose to go down this route, especially considering that he already did the same thing much better on Midnight's Shared Blossom. The weirdly emotional ending, on the other hand, is great.

 

3) Roza Vetrov 7:43

 

Here is where it starts to get rather good, and it's also here that the album offers a first glimpse of its more ambitious elements: as much as the genre relies on innovation, it's relatively rare for artists to experiment much with rhythm (that being more the domain of IDM), but this track features some novel ideas in this direction, and they actually work. It also has melodies. In fact there are quite a few melodies on the album, but not of the sort conventionally heard in, say, Goa trance. And they are never the driving force of a track, but are rather used as if they were just another voice among the many weird noises; I daresay the actual choice of notes used, rather than the impression they make as a whole, hardly seems important.

 

4) Chiba Showers 8:09

 

Chiba Showers takes the two features mentioned above, namely the experimental rhythms and strange, amodal melodies, and makes them more prominent. I was particularly pleased to hear some of the swaying kick drum patterns that made Enichkin's Beyond the Shadow of Doubt so fantastic make an appearance here.

 

5) Auroral Shake 8:44

 

This is awesome. As well as more rhythmic mindfuckery, this track also contains a fair few of the extended time-signature-destroying breaks that are now commonplace in darkpsy. But while I generally find them annoying in the hands of other artists, here they just make sense; rather than ruining the flow of the track, they instead form the very backbone of its long-term structure, which manages to almost completely metamorphose several times while still fitting together as a coherent whole. A particular highlight is shortly after half way through, at which point the track consists almost entirely of percussion.

 

6) Coctau Paradox 8:46

 

The beginning of Coctau Paradox prominently features a bizarre vocal sample which would sound more at home in the kind of neutered house music that might get played in a trendy hair salon. Otherwise, this is pretty much Insoluble-by-numbers; there are brief moments of brilliance, but for the most part it descends into rather aimless doodling with noises.

 

7) Singular Nagar 9:37

 

Another great one, this. Like Auroral Shake it comprises several distinct sections, although unlike that tune it segues between them without letting go of the underlying 4/4 beat. Above all I'd like to draw your attention to the beautiful ambient outro. Actually, several of the tracks end with really nice beatless passages; they're only short but they're head and shoulders above most psybient, which makes me think that Kindzadza could make a full downtempo album at some point. I don't expect it will happen, but it should.

 

8) Была Nebula 8:30

 

This track and the next are probably the most melody-driven pieces of the CD, bearing in mind that Kindzadza's melodies are made of altogether different stuff to most others. Here they consist largely of dense, high-pitched chords which are detuned to give them a very spacey, retro sci-fi vibe.

 

9) Xunami 8:46

 

I can't put my finger on why, but I find this the most accessible and immediate tune on the album; the sort a person can have on in the background without really paying attention, and it will still get under his skin and make him want to nod his head in time to the beat. After my first few listens its transparent appeal led me to fear that I would get bored of it quite quickly, but I was wrong - there's actually a whole load of interesting detail that only reveals itself upon closer inspection.

 

 

 

Overall: As one should have come to expect, Insoluble is an album which tries to redefine what constitutes "psychedelic" and "trance". It succeeds. I find it more hit-and-miss than his last album, but the good parts (which is most of them) achieve what only the very best music manages; namely, it allows the listener to discover a new way to listen to music. If you're prepared to be challenged, buy this and listen with an open mind - you will be rewarded.

 

Favourite Tracks: 3, 4, 5(!), 7(!), 9(!)

[psyfactor]

hmm i always thought thats the dark psychedelic music - must have a dark nighttime atmosphere and remind a bit forests and night time places with a bit BOOooo stuff)))...

but not the music with chaotic movements of the psychedelic sounds with cosmo-highko style without any deep dark night atmospheres....

anyway i dont feel the dark here....thats why i cant understand a meaning "and it's still dark psytrance"

 

 

btw)) great review)!! not just technical instruction) really detailed)

[Rotwang]

[...] anyway i dont feel the dark here....thats why i cant understand a meaning "and it's still dark psytrance"

Well, yes; perhaps I should have written "it's still a natural progression from dark psytrance". On paper it has some of the defining characteristics of the genre, but I didn't mean to give the impression that it actually sounds like other darkpsy, because it doesn't. It sounds like something new (though you're right about the Highcosmos connection).

 

great review)!!

Thanks! Love your new album, btw.

[frix]

I think the term darkpsy also works for fast, hard and chaotic music.

 

As for the album. I definately like parts of it.

For me it's not everyday music. I listen to it rarely.

Sometimes though it feels like work reaching or waiting for the sweet spots in the tracks.

 

edit: Just wanted to mention that technically this album is damn amazing sounding. Crystal clear, razor sharp and banging.

Benefits alot from a good sound system.

[longloststar]

I find this release to be quite on the dark side of dark psy, but the darkness lies in the coldness of the sound, in apparent chaos, rather than typical stereotypes of evil and horror (which is also a common theme in dark psy). Perhaps someone should be inclined to fear the dread of vast space, rather than some lurking shadow, for this to be perceived Either way, lovely stuff in my opinion.

[MAM015]

great album, looking forward to hear more

[Rotwang]

I'm surprised this release hasn't received more attention here. Also, since writing the above review track 6 has grown on me a lot, and now I love it. The whole album has grown on me actually, but track 6 is the only one that's been a real surprise.

[kazuku]

Great album, I got a chance to hear a lot of the tracks on a fat soundsystem during the kdd live at Antaris this year, and have to say it was a great experience. I was glued to the floor with my feet by some electro magnetic force field while I was surfing through hyperspace. I dont find any really dissapointing tracks, as was already mentioned there are alot of small touches that grow on you over time, the trip lurks in between those little, time warping details whose effects grow with the size of the soundsystem. The production is second to none as we have come to expect. In fact this is what relly makes the sound special imo, that crystal quality and supreme punch that really makes the most of effects..small touches, shifts in baseline colour - you can hear the detail that went into every single sound with supreme clarity.

Excellent review, I agree with most of it! I enjoyed the first 2 tracks as well though.

 

And then there are those mechanoid aliens which communicate with me through the music

[Balance]

How can you ca this dark? There's no dark atmospher nor are the track titles dark. If anything this sounds like cosmic space travel inter-dimensional trance. Love the sounds, he's very much moved in to the world of modular synthesis now so cannot wait for his new album due shortly in 2014/15.