Diving into Kayo Dot for the first time has made me think about other artists that challenge our perception of scale. Kayo Dot record huge albums, the kind that reward those with long attention spans and keen ears. Think about the jewels on the helmet of the Ghent Altarpiece: a level of detail that seems to go beyond the capabilities of the human eye. How was someone (or many ones) able to access that space? Another violent, extended right-brain-discharge which comes to mind is Henry Darger’s heralded work of outsider art The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as The Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, a 15,000 page book that details the adventures of a group of very young, very beautiful, hermaphroditic girls as they endure unspeakably graphic violence (in vivid watercolor illustration) at the hands of adults. It’s a fantasy.
One thing is for certain, the amount of weirdness and intricacy a given work can exhibit is unbounded when you factor in technology. “Magnetism,” from Kayo Dot’s forthcoming LP Plastic House on the Base of Sky, looms like a multi-headed prog beast held together by a fractured new-wave beat and seriously sticky psychedelic duct tape. As the primary composer, vocalist, and guitarist for Kayo Dot, Toby Driver has piloted his project like a musical Odysseus, seeking out sonic mischief and adventure in dark, surreal realms – the hermit kingdom of black metal, the veld of lotus-eating prog rock romantics, “chamber metal,” territories of Driver’s past band Maudlin of the Well – and he’s developed a taste for synthetic textures along the way. Kayo Dot proudly declare they “never make the same album twice,” and apparently go to fantastic lengths to prove it.
More about: Kayo Dot
