KILT are, as I wrote to Bob Bellerue a few days after this session, "...a real mind-fuck. About as good as two-man noisy improv gets." Their lurching, and wonderfully animate performances, particularly the massive, 39-min. "Fire Horse," are so like a giant amoeba, feasting on the nutrition of the spirit, that I have yet to fully absorb their true monstrosity even in my own post-session listening, where comfortable obsession is usually the rule of law. The set is simply that gargantuan, not only in length, but in range and energies.
The contrasting elements of high-volume trance/minimalism ala the Theatre of Eternal Music, the churning PE-style "riffs" that appear and then dissipate, and the hi-freq dancing of Bob and Raven Chacon's exuberant communications via sound-shattering are quite a thing to behold in person as well as hear, and it seems appropriate to embed this live video I shot of them four nights later, from the My Castle of Quiet vimeo channel -
KILT from My Castle of Quiet on Vimeo.
I very much see KILT as among the natural heirs to a certain brand of humanist, soulful power improv, which began with LaMonte Young and his aforementioned Theatre, stopped off in Europe with ensembles like MEV and AMM, appeared later in the UK with The New Blockaders, and now sits comfortably on many a small stage, in dark, poorly ventilated rooms across the U.S. and elsewhere.
Thanks to session engineer Ernie Indradat for achieving a wonderfully organic, lively room mix, that reacted in harmony with Raven and Bob's every shift in dynamics, and to Tracy Widdess for once again dressing up my iPhone capture, always finding the image Kosmische that matches the sounds just right.
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