Kaukasus: I

Boasting members of Jaga Jazzist, Motorpsycho, Anglagard, White Willow, The Autumn Ghost and Opium Cartel, the three piece Kaukasus could be seen as some sort of Art-Prog supergroup. However let's not saddle them with such throwaway titles and instead focus on the fact that they've (Ketil Vestrum Einarse, Mattias Olsson and Rhys Marsh) between them conjured up an album that can in places be related to their main musical outputs, while confidently striving to be something altogether more individual. Brazenly melancholic in construction, the majority of I, the Kaukasus debut, brings a doleful introspection and presents it in a forceful and confident manner. It is a true contradiction in terms of just how strutting and swaggerful music that is most comfortable when not showing off, or revealing all of its trick and flicks in one go, really can be.

Instead Kaukasus fuse together vocals which could grace leisurely chart hits onto vintage keyboard excursions and beats which shun modern production gloss. Oozing out of the very pores of this creation come great helpings of ambient swooshes, ticking, clicking electronica and all manner of flutes and horns (the bells and whistles were busy that day). Yet amazingly the overriding vibe these layers of ideas and sounds conjure is simplicity, sparseness and spaciousness. For the more visually inclined, it is easy to imagine these sounds blowing across snow covered slopes while figures wander lost in ever deepening drifts of bleakness. All the while whistling a merry tune as their cause becomes more and more one of hopelessness. For what takes the ideas that make "In The Stillness Of Time", or "Reptilian" and makes them so inescapably engaging is the stabs of casual melody which run throughout them. Sometimes these melodious moments spark jaggedly, sometimes they could smooth sandpaper with a quick glance. However they run deep and are unavoidably, subconsciously, attention ensnaring. Listen to "Lift The Memory" and if you're aren't humming, whistling, singing, armpit parping the melody line for days after, then your throat, lips, mouth and underarms must be dryer than the now blunted sandpaper. However both the closing section of "The Skies Give Meaning" and the entirety of "In The Stillness Of Time" bring antithesis, being layers and layers of scrilling, yet hypnotic flute, keys and sounds that are closer to electronic Jazz than trad Prog. Both offering the variety needed to make the rest of the album hit harder than initially realised.

Probably the best word to describe I is captivating. Possibly the best two words - mood music. However mood music that can be used to alter your mood, not that which requires the correct one to allow engagement.

Sweet, soothing and beautiful, yet snarling, jarring and desolate, Kaukasus are a band who deliver whichever emotion you allow yourself to give in to, but you will allow yourself to be given freely...and repeatedly.

Track Listing
1. The Ending Of The Open Sky
2. Lift The Memory
3. In The Stillness Of Time
4. Starlit Motion
5. Reptilian
6. The Witness
7. The Skies Give Meaning

Added: March 16th 2015
Reviewer: Steven Reid
Score:
Related Link: I at Burning Shed
Hits: 3354
Language: english

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