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"Trust us when we say that countless otherwise sage people have sacrificed years of their lives trying to accurately summarize the music of Kayo Dot." - Time Out New York
"But if you like your violence framed by surreal mumbojumbo, you may find them awe-awakening; the slow sections are suspenseful, and the climaxes will make your hair jump off your head." - Pitchfork
"It's classical for scenster indie kids majoring in art and clueless about classical music, post-rock for metalheads clueless about post-rock, and just plain stale pointless random noise that stalls and stalls from doing anything remotely interesting for anyone without their heads up their asses." - Metal-Archives
"Amaranth the Peddler. seriously, what the fuck? I don't care how many drugs, or how 'arty' you think you are, that's a fucking GAY title" - Metal-Archives
Kayo Dot are the most terrifying band on the planet. If doom metal bands evoke visions of Gamera, the giant tortoise of destruction, Kayo Dot are the musical Cthulhu. A creature so grotesque, unholy, inexplicable and nightmarish it can only be regarded as an abomination.
I chose Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue because no other album this decade made me say "OK, I give up. What the fuck are they DOING?" quite so many times. With their first album, Choirs of the Eye(2003), you could at least follow along and go "This sounds like post-rock. Now here's a prog section. Then this part is totally metal!" No such luck here. All aspects of their sound - Toby Driver's mental-patient vocals, Mia Matsumiya's tweaking viola, other instruments, whatever the fuck they do - merge into a distinct whole that moves and warps from hushed weirdness to apocalyptic crescendos.
But that makes them sound conventional. Even when they get loud, the effect is strangely anti-cathartic - some would say anticlimactic. To think of this music as a series of dramatic buildups is missing the point. The real power of this band, and the element that gives this album nearly infinite replay value, is how uncompromising these compositions remain, long after the shock value of soft-to-loud climaxes and punishing noise assaults (the coda of "___ On Limpid Form" is 13-and-a-half minutes of your life you will never get back) wears off. This band does not give a fuck about your need for "melody" or discernible structure. That they have any fanbase at all (and they surely fucking do) is testament to the paucity of truly groundbreaking musicians this decade. People still want something new, despite that everything that got any amount of "hype" from the critics this decade was a rehash of a throwback.
But Kayo Dot go beyond "new" and really seem to occupy a space of their own. People will front and say this shit reminds them of Jeff Buckley or King Crimson or Neurosis or whatever, but for me the only thing that even comes close to creating this mood or atmosphere is maudlin of the Well, Toby Driver's old band (whose guitarist went to college with Jeremy Olson, so bonus extra Babble connection!). But even that band could be safely pigeonholed into the "avant-metal" category and subsequently ignored. Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue is the album where Driver found an escape route from shallow comparisons and guided his band into complete unique artistic territory. And that's why I've chosen it as my Favorite album of the decade. - A.H.
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