KES BAND
Kes Band II
(Mistletone/Fuse)
Kes is like one of those special dreams you don’t often have where everything is awesome and where even days later you’re still wishing you could go back to that place – so far and foreign from your real world but filled with a mysterious air of distilled emotions.
Well, Kes Band II really truly is the aural manifestation of a dream, one that’s wonderfully different for everyone and on every listen. A leap of sorts for the man behind the acronym, Karl Scullin has from his early recordings often been defined by the unique and haunting voice that swims from his head. With this, his fourth Kes album, he (and his bandmates Laura Jean, Julian Patterson, Biddy Conner and Lehmann Smith) have left behind the road signs of lyrics and consigned to us ten instrumental pieces of pure abstract beauty.
Built upon the equally unique and vivid pictures Sculin paints with his guitar, these songs transform themselves as though they were one 40-minute story – ‘Treesfall’ and ‘Patterson’s Curse’ are reminiscent of the lost, transcendent journeys that define The Dirty Three. ‘Doors Open Doors Close’ and the shorter ‘Jessica Braz’ are filled with the shape-shifting guitar of Sculin that sings like a siren’s voice off in the distance, while the effortless gallop of ‘Outs’ and lurch of ‘The Leyden Experiment’ cast long shadows of unease across a dusky landscape.
Kes Band II is filled with all the beauty of previous albums, even though it is unlike anything Kes has done before. It’s a wondrous album that constantly flicks lit matches into the kindling of your imagination and while it’s not telling you what to think or what to feel it will give you an exquisite world to escape to and play within.
HHHH½     Alex Gillies