Review: Kayo Dot – Every Rock, Every Half-Truth under Reason
Toby Driver, through his various projects and releases, has always maintained a penchant for unpredictability. The early days of maudlin Of The Well were defined by a looser take on avant-prog rooted in death/extreme metal with My Fruit Psychobells… A Seed Combustible, which then gave way to a complex duology of experimental voyages through metal, progressive rock, and experimental music (Bath, Leaving Your Body Map). This project would then lie dormant (barring the distinctly metal-deficient but still amazing reunion record, titled Part the Second), giving way to a sister band titled Kayo Dot.
Despite being plenty eclectic and versatile in their own right, the long discography of Kayo Dot makes maudlin seem like Motörhead in terms of sound continuity. Fans of the previous avant-garde metal stylings in the vein of Ved Buens Ende….. and Disharmonic Orchestra (kinda? hard to compare any of these bands to anyone else) were delighted and/or disappointed to find Dot’s first record, Choirs of the Eye, was a record in the same loose genre as Bath, but completely and totally different. Released as a part of John Zorn‘s Composer series, this record further fleshed out the bits of chamber music on maudlin’s records while taking more from the fields of jazz, classical, and post-rock than their heavier roots. This pattern would remain consistently inconsistent throughout the Kayo Dot timeline, with Driver’s rotating cast of musicians exploring varying amounts of chamber, progressive rock, goth, jazz, electronic, and more. Unlike some of his more fart-sniffing peers, Driver’s success record with these styles is high enough to give me confidence in just about any style of music he chooses to incorporate.
Now, after 2021’s lauded return to metal titled Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, Kayo Dot’s announcement of a new album meant to be a 20th year commemoration of Choirs with the original band that played on that album feels strange. As detailed above, Kayo’s main through-line was a commitment made to progressing forward; would an anniversary album make any sense whatsoever for a creative like Driver? Even Moss Grew‘s return to metal was done on the band’s own terms, incorporating much of the gothic DNA from Blasphemy and Coffins On Io and incorporating new elements of doom metal and ’70s prog. More than anything else, I was incredibly curious what the lineup that brought us Choirs would be most interested in releasing two decades after the fact. Upon listening to this record, one thing was painfully clear: this is one-hundred-percent not a sequel album.
In fact, marketing these 5 tracks as such now feels like a strange practical joke. Sure, it’s another collection of avant-garde excursions with influences from the crazier sides of snobby critic-bait, but this new release from Kayo Dot is an even less conventionally-structured piece of work and even further removed from the conventions of metal and/or rock. The group describes this sound as “liminal metal,” which is a genre distinction that makes my eye twitch involuntarily (this is the music they’re playing in those dimly-lit hotel pools?), especially since the opener “Mental Shed” immediately shows the only vestigial remnant of heavy metal are the raspy growls that hang over a thick, sour, droning soundscape that rolls in like a deep fog. The closest metal band it reminds me of is maybe Oranssi Pazuzu, with its meticulously crafted atmosphere and otherworldly growling vocals. Even still, this opener stands alone even in that comparison; it’s much more sparse and unsettling, existing between horror movi suspense and a queasy sense of dread.
This track builds a distinctly ghostly presence, depicting the hazy visage of a dreamlike state between reality and nostalgia. According to the presser, Every Rock represents “…a cultural and social moment in which the future has grown indistinct, and the present is swollen with the ghosts of a past that will not release its grip.” This record is described as being about a lot of things: the predicable and cyclical trajectory of culture, a desire to maintain spontaneity in human expression, and the looming threat of generative AI usurping said expression as the main source of the art we consume. After all, what speaks more to the omnipresent, lingering specters of days long gone than a technology that only regurgitates and synthesizes from the past and its own facsimiles? Many people rightly focus on tools like Midjourney and Suno’s many moral and ecological failings, but less time is spent musing on how this technology is fundamentally flawed in terms of unique creativity.
These themes manifest throughout the 5 lengthy tracks that make up Every Rock. Previously-mentioned opener “Mental Shed” is an eerie drone composition that transitions smoothly into the first single, “Oracle by Severed Head,” which is maybe the album’s closest moment to Choirs. As you may expect, any similarities make up a far different whole, as the track slowly goes from a Godspeed You! Black Emperor-style post-rock swell to a harsher free-form blast of jazz-chamber-cacophony. The next track, “Closet Door in the Room She Died,” is another lengthy and unnerving drone track that creeps along with great tension. Over this otherworldly arrangement, Driver delivers a gritty, pained, and desperate collection of disturbing shouts, a truly harrowing performance that’s underpinned by a musical progression that fails to cease (it’s easily the record’s most intense track). Following that constantly building 15 minutes of anxiety is the record’s longest movement, “Automatic Writing.” A staggeringly massive ambient introduction (again) swells into a wide and expansive wall of sound, instilling a deep unwell feeling in the very core of the listener. This song serves as a main climax for the record, fulfilling Driver and company’s desire for a truly unpredictable composition. After this watershed, atmospheric segment, concluding with a tranquil and graceful musical fall, the record concludes with a track that’s far closer to the Pink Floyd prog rock theatrics that were on Moss Grew and the gloomy sounds of The Cure that were clearly instrumental to a record like Coffins. Even still, this track unfolds in a unique manner, with stilted rhythms and desolate melodies that wriggle against the haze that permeates the whole record.
The way this record sonically unravels is second to very few, fulfilling the desire to cast the shackles of entropy off of creation, while still depicting the poltergeist of a past in limbo. Far more than any metal or progressive rock record, Every Rock, Every Half-Truth under Reason is indebted to the UK-born musical movement of Hauntology and related musical stylings (sparse ambient/drone/electronic built off of samples that feel as if they are decaying as you listen; The Caretaker, Boards of Canada, Tim Hecker, William Basinski, etc.). The Choirs line-up of Kayo Dot had a clear intent of depicting the unease of a world defined by what has been created and not what could be created. Ironically enough, this entropy of stagnation is depicted through a thoroughly unpredictable album devoid of stagnation. It’s deep, layered, complex, rich, textured, and inventive, building a deeply unnerving atmosphere chock full of mystery.
The record also takes clear influences from avant-garde composers like the previously mentioned John Zorn, whose ingenious work in jazz and Klezmer was certainly informative on how Driver writes (as well as Zorn’s genre-pushing work with acts Mr. Bungle, Painkiller, Naked City, and more). This all culminates in a deeply moving piece of work, but one that asks for even more patience from the listener than previous Kayo Dot records. Much of this record is littered in excessive detail, with many of its most interesting elements needing a few listens to firmly take hold (to be honest, I’m sure there are more bits of detail I’ve yet to pick up on). Thematically, the record tackles its subject matter in an abstract manner, with various ideas being left open to interpretation. “Automatic Writing” is a phrase that comes from the field of Psychography, which is the phenomenon of writing without conscious intent. While the lyrics make note of literal writing towards the end of the track, this idea’s inclusion into the record is potentially a callback to the implicit critique of generative AI that inspired Every Rock. In a similar way, the bits of Kayo Dot familiarity on “Oracle by Severed Head” and “Blind Creature of Slime” could themselves be metatextual allusions to the piece’s commentary on cultural regurgitation.
“The threat [of AI art] wasn’t just technological—it was metaphysical,” writes Driver, “It became even more important to write in ways that resist prediction… move against the grain of legibility, to make something that slips from the grasp of systems designed to anticipate us.” Every Rock‘s composition and technique are majorly successful in eschewing anything close to insipid or mundane. Microtonality is a major element of the work, with the band utilizing custom crafted instruments and a wide palette of influences, resulting in an album that almost feels outside the boundaries of space and time. I’d say it sounds otherworldly, but much of what makes up this record is rooted in the past and present of this dimension. Horror soundtracks, electroacoustic/musique concrète compositions, experimental metal, ambient/drone music, and the fragility of our own human perception all make up the lingering ghosts that haunt this hour of material. It’s an uneasy, unsettling marriage of ideas that culminates in a warped reflection of cultural history; one that mirrors artificial synthesis’ “composition” techniques while also accomplishing things that AI “art” never could.
In some ways, the only predictable end result of a Kayo Dot recording session is something completely unpredictable. It’s clear that, throughout his career as a musician and composer, Toby Driver is an artist interested in few things more than change. It’s a great impulse for any creator, one that ensures that future endeavors will keep listeners on their toes more than anything else. Every Rock, Every Untruth is clearly a result of that impulse, maybe even the group’s most pure representation of that desire for evolution. It’s also a clear musing on how the past lingers into the present, attempting to find some form of peace with these ghosts while also forging a new path forward. As such, I agree with Driver’s anticipation that fans of his previous work may be torn on this newest record, as it is deeply unique both inside and outside of his discography; some of the closest comparisons I can think to make are Hecker’s Virgins and other electroacoustic compositions from artists like The Shadow Ring and Robert Ashley (who has his own record titled Automatic Writing that I strongly recommend). The artist progression of Driver and company is awe-inspiring to view, as much of what makes records like Choirs, Leaving Your Body Map, and Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue is here in full strength, but built upon with new compositional techniques and ambitious end-goals. More than anything else, you will not be expecting what Every Rock, Every Untruth has in store for you, even if you are familiar with any or all artists and styles cited in this review.
But, hey, that’s all you can really ask for from an artist so deeply married to the unknown and unpredictable.
4.5/5 Flaming Toilets ov Hell
Every Rock, Every Half-Truth under Reason is out now through Prophecy Productions.
