Iksnik
“Citats Enipla”

I’ve been looking forward to the new Kinski record for months, and that’s the truth. I’m not disappointed, either. The tone is less dizzying and more brutally powerful than that of the previous “Airs Above Your Station,” which swirls and swoops like a rotor to great effect. And the songs?
All the music is credited to Chris Martin and Kinski. Chris is the taller of the two guitar players and, one may assume, the visionary focus of the group… But I don’t know if “song” is the best way in to a Kinski record. In fact, I don’t know what the best way in is, to a Kinski record.
I’m listening to this one backwards. The idea came about in two ways.
One: Like “Airs,” “Alpine” begins heavy and hard and then, throughout its 4 short sides (wider grooves for deeper sound, a single album price for two slabs of vinyl but not actually more content unless you count GIRTH, which abounds) dissipates into the air. At the end, rather than clubbed into submission, you are ready to get up and drink some water, or maybe take a walk. Refreshed.
But it is an alien strategy, and it stuck in my head as ODD, until I encountered way-in #Two:
Record two, side D, was sitting on my record player, and I was too lazy to change it for record one.
To my surprise, when I dropped the needle, I was hit with something much harder than I remembered from that late in the album. The piece is called “Edge Set” and it ROCKS with a capital ROCKS: lots of guitars jumping in and out of the left and right speakers like kids at the swimming hole, then the mood gives gentle way to either a mellow b‑section or a second piece called “Waka Nusa.” It is hard to tell where songs end and begin, but I am not bothered by this. “Waka Nusa” is an ambient and chill electro-guitar space that eventually, uh, dissipates into the air. I thought the side was over a full minute before the needle picked up.
Side C begins with “All Your Kids Have Turned To Static,” which features chiming, keyboardy guitar chords, crisp melodic leads and some well-blended flute from guitarist Matthew Reid-Schwarz. The single-note guitar melodies migrate to the lower strings and a somewhat Hendrix‑y tone, the chill one from “Axis,” which I like. Chordal walls lift the brain somewhat above its natural postion. We move to “The Snowy Parts Of Scandinavia,” where it is, naturally, snowing. The crystal prismaticism of a million different snowflakes and the dampening heaviness of moisture in the air are better rendered here than in many actual snowstorms.
A vehicle emerges from the darkness, visible at first only as lights and audible only as the rumble of an engine, moving slowly but relentlessly, um, overhead… It’s not a snowplow, after all.
When it is directly above, the assault begins. Are those weapons, or just violently flashing lights? They are intermittent, but brutal. Perhaps our reactions are being studied. An ambassador beams down with a friendly drumbeat and tries a more melodic approach that wins our hesitant trust. We are embraced anthemically and invited aboard… How did they know we’d be out here in the snow? Were they looking for us, specifically us, or just trolling? Whatever — if there’s even a difference, I’m honored either way. And the groove is THICK — how it could be otherwise?
The dream ends, and Side B begins, with “The Party Which You Know Will Be Heavy,” and it sounds like what you’d expect: big rock. But it stops and starts and stutters like a fucked-up CD — but this is a record, last time I checked! — and eventually goes all weird until the excellent “Passed Out On Your Lawn,” which I’ve seen live a bunch of times and also have heard in a different version on Kinski’s AMAZING split-cd with Japan’s excellent Acid Mothers Temple (as “Fell Asleep On Your Lawn,” presumably the title was updated to follow the heavy party).
“Lawn” showcases bassist Lucy Atkinson in a way that compares to her excellently solid live presence. The descending guitar and bass riffs devolve gradually but without a loss of transcendantly massive impact into a supreme, sometimes metronomic, very well-mixed jam that recalls the Acid Mothers, later Coltrane records, early live Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix Experience, & Can. Momentum is king, & also queen. Dissonance may or may not be present, but with a wash of sound like this it is not a relevant issue. This is improvised sound sculpture of a high order. The closest mainstream equivalent I can think of is “And The Gods Made Love” from Jimi’s Electric Ladyland album, but that was very much a studio work. I have seen & heard Kinski do this stuff with nothing but a stage, amps, guitars (and flute) and a bunch of stomp boxes, plus of course drums. (Sometimes the drummer, Barrett Wilke — it was Dave Weeks on “Airs” but I don’t hear much difference — leaves the stage during the really ambient parts.)
With all of that, “Passed Out On Your Lawn” is still their hookiest tune.
Which brings us to the grand finale, Side A. It begins with a slurry, descending, crunchy but electronic-sounding guitar line that spreads like a fungus through the stereo spectrum, gains some hangtime, then dunks with a hard-driving unison guitar&bass riff, and another, proto-metal fuzz power, then a stuttering off-time one-note jackhammer over drum rolls to whip up yer adrenaline and back to that second heavy riff… HOO-HAA! Why don’t more bands play like this?!!
Dig the one-note high-pitched drone, and then a slam! down a minor 2nd and more hangtime, fuck, that is some MAD SUSTAIN — this tune is called “Hot Stenographer,” BTW & FYI — and there it is, off again on the stuttering one-note heaviness, ZOW! for MINUTES while the shaman leaps out of the grrrroooovvvvzzzz and strokes your brain with an axe -
There is a sudden halt and “The Wives Of Artie Shaw” begins, but nothing could kick ass like that last track, sorry Artie, you can’t have it, the volume comes back down and so do the dynamics, pounding toms and squealing prehistoric birdcalls, we have stepped out of a time machine we didn’t know we were in and there isn’t another human in sight but the aliens are just lifting off after planting the seeds of evolution in some rat-like things they found eating dinosaur shit under a rock…
“Hiding Drugs In The Temple (Part 2)” is more screaming uptempo, like Sonic Youth without the cool, and that’s a good thing. Some fractured times lead into caveman rumble & inscrutable harmony, the alien seeds are taking effect and mankind builds Seattle in six minutes, I can’t sit still, and then it’s over…

All of that said:
What’s up with the huge piece of black paper included in the gatefold package? Did SubPop use the trees in the cover photo to make all that extra shit, or what? (Anyway, I can’t fit it back in the sleeve and now it has greasy fingerprints all over it from trying.) Has Chris been head visionary all along, or is that new? And how come you can’t see how tall he is in any of the photos? They’re gonna do you like they did Sheryl Crow, bro!