Kinksi
CD Release w/Earth, Comets on Fire
Sat Feb 22, the Crocodile, $8.
It takes chutzpah to open your album with a 10-minute space dirge, as Seattle quartet Kinski do (with "Steve's Basement") on their dazzling new Sub Pop release, Airs Above Your Station. But that's a typical Kinski-esque gesture; they've been flouting conventional wisdom since they surfaced in 1998. (The track sounds like Spacemen 3 jamming with Earth, and it'll certainly separate the true psych-rock heads from the poseurs.)
Like 2001's Be Gentle With the Warm Turtle, Kinski's third album bristles with sinewy bursts of noise and glistens with tranquil beauty (often within the same song). The band's grasp of dynamics--always one of Kinski's strong points--has never been more riveting. They reconcile the tension between sonic experimentation/improvisation and song structure with grace and cunning. These dual aspects come naturally, according to guitarist Chris Martin, due to the band members' common backgrounds in heavy rock.
"Growing up and in college, that's what I was into," he explains in an interview at the Crocodile Cafe. "As time went on, I got more into the out, experimental stuff. [Our music] can't help being this combination. That's what the Herzog project [with Kinski bassist Lucy Atkinson and guitarist/flautist Matthew Reid-Schwartz] is about--to let us [operate] in this safe place where we can do whatever we want, and use the good results of that in Kinski."
"For Airs, things were pretty well structured," says Reid-Schwartz. "Certain songs are sectioned; there's a lot of sonic variance. That adds a whole other level to what are, relatively speaking, structured rock songs." Largely avoiding the digital hegemony in today's studios, Kinski laid down their tracks in analog on two-inch tape with producer Kip Beelman. "He helped us get a bigger-sounding record on the cheap," says Martin about Airs' robust yet spacey production values.
Beelman, who's worked with Sleater-Kinney, Unwound, Mars Accelerator, and many others, was especially drawn to Kinski for "their interest in using the studio as a creative tool, coupled with how much sonics would play a role in the recording of their albums. I see a clear progression from Warm Turtle as a more traditional rock-song-oriented album to Airs as a collection of suites with a much broader range of moods."
Kinski claim that their music has both "visceral and cerebral" appeal, and that's not empty boasting. "We like to rock, but we're bored with straight-ahead rocking," claims Martin. "We'd feel stupid grinding out a Stones kind of thing. We feel like we have to fuck it up somewhat." But Martin stresses that Kinski are "totally a rock band," because talk of improvisation "tends to scare people off." However, Reid-Schwartz asserts, "Even our long songs hold your attention. I think our music takes you on a ride."
True. Atkinson outlines the itinerary: "The album brings you up, freaks you out in the middle, then brings you down gently." Indeed, Kinski have done a masterly sequencing job. The aforementioned "Steve's Basement" leads into "Semaphore" and "Rhode Island Freakout," which should satisfy anyone thirsting for caustic, twin-guitar bludgeoning, with effects-laden intros and outros to boot. "Schedule for Using Pillows & Beanbags" is a sprawling epic that exhibits Kinski's love of apocalyptic explosions of guitar noise, and of the metronomic pulses used by Kraut-rock giants Can, Neu!, and Faust. "I Think I Blew It" (from Martin's Ampbuzz solo project) and "Your Lights Are (Out Or) Burning Badly" explore morose, spectral moods mapped out by Robert Fripp's Evening Star and Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain." The solemn guitar concerto "Waves of Second Guessing" tips a space helmet toward Spiritualized before tearing down the autobahn with outlaw glee as the band jolts into a blurred rave-up. The majestic "I Think I Blew It (Again)" parachutes you back to terra firma.
While they've played the last two Terrastock festivals (where the globe's headiest space-rock units congregate to raise money--and consciousnesses--for the British fanzine Ptolemaic Terrascope) and toured Japan and America with arguably the world's most awesome psychedelic collective, Acid Mothers Temple, Kinski feel somewhat out of place in Seattle, where garage rock and punk rule, and where PBR, not LSD, is the preferred means for achieving altered consciousness.
While they might not be this city's first brew of choice, Kinski maintain the quiet confidence of a band ascending to psychedelia's highest echelons; they are the only serious heirs to the Seattle space-rock throne vacated by the late, great Hovercraft. And with new drummer Barrett Wilke (also of This Busy Monster) replacing Dave Weeks, Kinski are poised in the coming months to boggle minds with a national tour, including a stop at Austin schmoozefest South by Southwest. So while we bemoan mainstream rock's dire state, Martin's declaration that "there are always a million good bands under the radar" lifts our spirits (of which we've drunk too much during the interview). If there's any justice, Airs will launch Kinski across that radar screen and into the stars.
