The first time I heard the British quartet Kaito play they were opening for Imperial Teen in San Francisco. I was immediatly impressed with their noise-pop approach and energy. They make the sort of music I love. There's a noisy immediacy to everything, and their studio work maintains this low-fi energy as well as any band I've ever heard.
Behind a good portion of this occaionally cacophonous music is created by guitarist Dave Lake. Both he and front-woman Nikki Colk incorporate a varity of electronic toys and gizmos, used over the guitar pickups, to increase the sound pallate they have to offer. It doesn't come across as a gag, or novelty sound so much as a genuine part of the sonic landscape they create.
Beyond the toys, however, Mr. Lake appears to take assembled noises more than standard notes to create Kaito's sound. I'd defy the nice people who transcribe songs for guitar magazines to clearly translate what he does on songs like "go" and "driving manual auto."
To me it's this sort of playing outside of the box that puts him in the same category as guitar legends like Edward VanHalen and Thurston Moore. Players who took things a step further than they'd gone before.
Their music is admitedly not for everyone, but most of the truly great music isn't.
Buy Kaito's 2001 release You've Seen Us...You Must Have Seen Us at Amazon.com.
Buy Kaito's 2003 release Montigola Underground [EP] at Amazon.com.
Buy Kaito's 2003 release Band Red at Amazon.com.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment