A casual survey of what’s been written about Blue Lambency Downward shows the usual things one would expect from people writing about curious albums. There are a number of stabs at trying to jam Kayo Dot’s style, which sprawls fractally off in a number of directions, into one genre or another, sometimes having to hyphenate new genres until it begins to resemble a German translation. There also is a constant struggle to find some connection between founder Toby Driver’s metal past and Kayo Dot’s current strategy, which contains, at best, remnants of metal.
The fact is, outlier bands like Kayo Dot that sit on the edges of a number of different strategies aren’t easy to grasp and therefore get mislabeled, and through that mislabeling generate the wrong kind of expectations, engendering frustration. There’s certainly a tradition of calling bands like this metal. However, placing them in that symbolic space has real repercussions on how one listens to their music, and with Blue Lambency Downward, any of the vestigial bits from their earlier albums that might be construed as metal are lost in the John Zorn-esque songs, written from the vantage point of modern composition and prog.
If anything, Blue stands in alignment with the music of groups such as Henry Cow or Univers Zero, or in general, any of the Rock In Opposition bands, and it makes more sense to connect them like this, in terms of strategy, rather than trying to have to place them into this bad-fitting genre or that one. There’s a book by Henri Focillon called The Life of Forms in Art that goes into this idea in much greater depth, but the gist is that historical circumstances may account for certain constraints on the forms in art, but the only way to account for the forms themselves is to look at their internal lives. This means redrawing the cognitive map for grouping musicians or forming them into genres, and in Kayo Dot’s case, that means separating the way they make music from their particular circumstances: what bands certain members used to be in or who they’re friends with or any of the other little ways we all artificially create scenes or genres.
TIME OUT NEW YORK calls Blue Lambency Downward "Easily the eeriest disc of the year" in their Halloween playlist, alongside Bauhaus, Current 93, Portishead, The Birthday Party, Fantômas, Sunn0))).. wow, great company! - article linked above!
Touring:
On tour:
June 2009: USA
Looking for:
Sept - Oct. 2009 - UK and Europe!
We are currently in need of a UK Booking agent. Please contact us if you are interested!
for all US booking please contact MERRICK JARMULOWICZ/THE KENMORE AGENCY: merrick@thekenmoreagency.com
for all mainland European booking please contact VINCENT ROYERS:
vincent@conspiracyrecords.com
For Press/Publicity:
Solid PR - chris@solidpr.com
Discography:
2009 maudlin of the Well - Part The Second (self-released)
2008 Kayo Dot - Blue Lambency Downward (Hydra Head)
words cannot describe my love for your music. but i have to say i am partial to dowsing and choirs of the eye. two of my all time favorites right there, i will have to talk with you all next time your in michigan. i am a musician/composer, so your music is very inspiring and just incredible to me. i hold it very close to my heart, take care
i have been seeing people on internet forums saying this or that about how you guys werent "heavy" enough on Blue Lambency Downward, these people who say these things are so blinded. to me, Kayo Dot makes music that can put the most haunting winter chill in the spookiest, eeriest musical forms of the imagination. that is more heavy than what most of modern America is used to when using words like "heavy". you guys are album by album rewriting the process of how to define heavy, and i love it so much. thanks for doing what you all do, and all those people who talk crap about Kayo Dot can eat poop. i just had to vent that out!=)
salut ! merci pour l'ajout... Album SONGES DÉMENTS disponible prochaine date : Rocktambule / Festirolles 22 oct. 2009 1ère partie d'Abd Al Malik à la Rampe à bientôt... http://motspaumestrio.com
Dudes, thanks for playing in Liege. We really enjoyed your show and we hope you had a nice time too. We're already waiting for your next europe tour, cheers!
really enjoyed your tartar lamb set at lancaster. hope you have better luck with rest of your tour. come back soon with the full band... hopefully at some bigger venues.
recently acquired your albums it was awesome genre defying goodness, attempts to classify were thankful failures , i heard sound scapes that enriched the mind and tickle the fun understanding of music and juxtapositions, glad i was curious enough to hunt u done and have a good listen , thank u :)