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Last Active 01-01-70 12:00 am
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| All Kayo Dot trax ranked 2021
LPs only i am a coward | | 64 |  | Kayo Dot
Blasphemy
TIER: NOT GOOD
An Eye for a Lie
Alright, alright, Blasphemy is a dull album and very much needed more wayward xperimentals and fewer plodding guitar musics, I hear you - but this misfired onslaught of vocal effects over an indistinct muddle of an instrumental was v much not the answer | | 63 |  | Kayo Dot
Plastic House on Base of Sky
All The Pain In All The Wide World
Gratingly long tripout of hazybaby scifi humwhirrs and a conceptually cool improv in which Toby D does new things with his voice. Not a fun or particularly engaging studio experience, probably at least a little exciting live though idk. Kills Plastic House's momentum as soon as it's begun, so more minus points. Meh. | | 62 |  | Kayo Dot
Hubardo
The Black Stone
Infamous Kayo meme song: terrible prologue for a superb album. I get that Jason Byron growling indecipherable whateverness over a nothing-backing for 6 fucking minutes was probably an apt way to open this crazy crazy journey, but it's a "what have I got myself into" opener in the most bemusing sense. Some bonus points for an exciting finale. | | 61 |  | Kayo Dot
Blue Lambency Downward
TIER: YH OKAY
The Sow Submits
A meandering dissonant instrumental thing that sums up all Blue Lambency Downward's inscrutable qualities without catching much of its intrigue. Inoffensive in sequencing. | | 60 |  | Kayo Dot
Gamma Knife
Mirror Water, Lightning Night
The most woodwindy of Gamma Knife's lofi woodwind black metal tracks. Otherwise unremarkable. | | 59 | | Kayo Dot
Blasphemy
Ocean Cumulonimbus
This one immediately starts Blasphemy off on the wrong foot; something about the opening guitar line never sat right with me, and the highlights are more or less a story of how-much-distortion-can-we-tap-into-here? Shaky attempt at a dramatic opening. | | 58 | | Kayo Dot
Blue Lambency Downward
Right Hand is the One I Want
First half = Kayo lounge jazz, second half = autopilot BLD vibes. Remarkably forgettable for a Kayo Dot song. | | 57 | | Kayo Dot
Blasphemy
The Something Opal
Similar story to "Ocean Cumulonimbus", but gains points for a relatively dynamic and personable vocal performance from Driver. Still missing the mark re. dramatic intrigue. | | 56 | | Kayo Dot
Blasphemy
Midnight Mystic Rise and Fall
Fairly exciting opening, but otherwise more forgettable theatrics from Blasphemy | | 55 |  | Kayo Dot
Coffins on Io
Longtime Disturbance On The Miracle Mile
I feel that this song was intended as a breather in between two of Coffins' denser noiry post-punk sprawls, and it's more or less up to that mission. There are some nice vocal inflections here, but the melodies are a little flat by Driver's standards. | | 54 |  | Kayo Dot
Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike
Brethren of the Cross
My least favourite from the new album and rather unfortunately placed as track #2. It's got the same doom metal edge as many of the album's best moments, but it drags its heels rather more and settles into that somewhat amorphous swampy meanderspot that I don't appreciate from kreativ lower bpm metal. Workable moment to moment, but I don't like its overall shape somehow. | | 53 |  | Kayo Dot
Coyote
TIER: MMM YES I AM LISTENING
Abyss Hinge 1: Sleeping Birds Sighing In Roscolux
This isn't really a song as much as an atvonal gothy skronkhowl and I will never listen to it on its own, but am very much here for it. Unlistenable BOP. | | 52 | | Kayo Dot
Blasphemy
Lost Souls on Lonesome's Way
Easily my favourite of Blasphemy's template Theatre Of Goth Guitar tracks, mainly because the guitar licks on this are actually pretty tight. Hooray for guitars. Driver has a couple of superior vocal lines, and I am happy! Still a little plain at points, but we're up a level now yay | | 51 | | Kayo Dot
Coyote
Whisper Ineffable
The first of Coyote's two gloomy centrepieces is honestly a bit of a slog and a real moodflattener if you approach it at the wrong moment. One of the least approachable cuts in the whole Kayo DiscOT really, but it dishes out the attritional, harrowing side of this murkiest of albums like nothing else and TD's bass punctuations throughout that horrible skincrawler of a coda show off his tone like nothing else. | | 50 | | Kayo Dot
Plastic House on Base of Sky
Magnetism
Magnetism is pretty much the poster child of PHOBOS for me insofar as I love the sparkly sparkly retrofuture analogue synthtones and the eerie guitar stabs that stab so nicely when you least expect them, but tracing a distinct rhythm or motif through it just gives me a headache, even though the dynamics are quite straightforward. It does has a climax, so there's that! If all you want from Kayo Dot is an Increasingly Loud showcase of freaked out space shit to trip your feckin brains out to, then this is a winner. I cannot handle it, but I see the potential! | | 49 | | Kayo Dot
Blasphemy
Vanishing Act in Blinding Gray
Blasphemy's most epic ott haunted house diva moment epic song. It is long, it is epic, Toby straight-up nails its climactic middle clamorous doom section, the title is very good, it's got a lot going for it. This does not explain why I do not ever feel like listening to it, but it does net it a respectable spot on the list. Kl | | 48 | | Kayo Dot
Gamma Knife
Lethe
Okayyyyy, first controversial placement number #1! This the cute Gregorian one that trolled the shit out of anyone that went into Gamma Knife (the Deathspell Omega Unplugged Live Experience) blind, and a lot of y'all loved it. I geddit, it is kinda gorgeous, I should probably love it more, those string flourishes are nice, Toby's voice is nice, but 1) I don't like the bells bc #churchmemories and 2) it is too nice. So there. everyone is wrong | | 47 | | Kayo Dot
Gamma Knife
Ocellated God
hahahahaha, from the sublime to the utterly fucked wooooo!! this song is batshit. probably the wildest thing on Gamma Knife, weird crackgem album that it is. this one sounds like it's going to be straightforward rockin' metal for approximately one and a half minutes, until all hell breaks loose and the band go to war with themselves and the tempo gets lost and it sortof turns into a slowmotion whirlpool of dissowhirl and many tortured screams occur and other things too.
Being [[extra]] real for a sec, most KD songs sound so meticulously realised that this one's chaos in motion stands out a bunch (esp with the live recording), and it's somehow extra appealing to hear the band come this close to sounding like they're about to straight up lose control. it also hurts my head. | | 46 | | Kayo Dot
Hubardo
Floodgate
This is a one-song fuck you to everyone who ever complained about Kayo Dot not playing enough metal post-Choirs. It's heavy and sludgy and fast and disgusting and long and way too fucking much to handle. Slightly better than Ocellated God by virtue of a drum performance from the depths of hypermagic HELL, but very much a bird of a feather. I shudder to think what this must have been like in front of KD's infamously lackluster live audiences. Big overkill. | | 45 | | Kayo Dot
Coyote
Abyss Hinge 2: The Shrinking Armature
Damn, barely a third of the way in and we're already 3/5ths done with Coyote?! It wasn't meant to be this way, I promise! This is the one I feel guiltiest about not sticking higher, which is partially correlated with how it sticks in my plebian mind as "the long one that isn't as unmelodic as the other ones". Am I wrong? This is probably Coyote's most meandering moment, even compared to Abyss Hinge 1's skronk war and Whisper Ineffable's feverchill - I don't really *get* that semi-uplifting extended horn intro, but I do like how it gives way to long ol' middle section rife with the bleak stuff. Once the song picks up from there, it's Coyote at its best: awkward, dark as hell, confusingly drawn out and thoroughly uncomfortable. | | 44 | | Kayo Dot
Plastic House on Base of Sky
Rings of Earth
More sparklesynth space antics from KD's most aesthetic heavy album. This one's got a faintly Bowie-ish quality to it that I can almost groove along to, but it's still a denser and more drawn out than I feel it needs to be. Big fan of the doomy coda however, possibly my favourite vocal moment from the album. Not much more to add here - this is probably the only PHOBOS cut that stands undramatically as a pretty good song without glaring strengths or weaknesses | | 43 | | Kayo Dot
Moss Grew On The Swords And Plowshares Alike
TIER: HIT THAT- HIT THAT SNARE!
Get Out Of The Tower
One of the heavier (but nowhere near the heaviest) cuts from everyone's new favourite life-affirming 2021 album! I feel a little awkward ranking this, as I feel it has some way to grow with me. Short story is it's pretty great, fierce moments of doomchurn emerging from uneasy downtime bass amblings, all building to an unexpectedly savage outro. Phwoar, what a beatdown! Angry Kayo is rare mood, so enjoy it while it lasts. Thing is, I don't love one of the main heavy guitar motifs and Moss... already has enough songs that take their time to get to crushing places for this to feel more like a warm-up for that album's stunning final pair than anything else. Nice. | | 42 | | Kayo Dot
Blasphemy
Blasphemy: A Prophecy
I've never been able to shake this track's large-bandaid-sized tabletop RPG itch: the combination of medieval Kayokitsch_rock and such unflatteringly clear enunciation of such [there are too many adjectives already] lyrics should not spark joy. It does not - I am criticising it!!! And quite possibly overrating it here, but I don't care ---- those medievalisms are actually pretty catchy and for all its ungainly Warning For The Ages-isms, this track does land a certain mystique that the rest of Blasphemy falls short of. Sometimes the direct path do be the true way for ye yung scions. Good track. | | 41 | | Kayo Dot
Plastic House on Base of Sky
Brittle Urchin
PHOBOS' closer is a quite surprising downbeat dirgething with haunting vocals and a spooky drumroll. I hereby dub it: Space Doom. As a closer, I really like it tbh, it has a great contrast with the rest of the album and a somewhat evasive feeling whereby it could belong anywhere (or nowhere?) within the Driververse - without context, I'd have placed it on Leaving Your Body Map or maybe Part the Second. So it has intrigue!! As a song it is also pretty good, but boi does the intrigue in question demand a bit of album・discog context. Sneaky, sneaky shit right here. | | 40 | | Kayo Dot
Hubardo
Vision Adjustment to Another Wavelength
Take Floodgate's unabsorbable deluge of extremities out of the picture, and this is the template Hubardo avantmetal hevy song. It is pretty fuckin heavy - that opening, the one right there, that means BIZNESS. Oomph. This is another track that works an absolute treat in sequence but maybe feels a little not-quite-polydimensional to offer as much as a standalone? It gets the edge over Brittle Urchin because Toby yelling "DUST" is badass and the guitars do dissonant semiquaver run things literally every bar and the atmospheric woodwindy coda thing feels like a potential final form of the Gamma Knife dissoDot mission statement, but I think all these are things Hubardo nailed bigger and better and zazzier elsewhere | | 39 | | Kayo Dot
Gamma Knife
Rite Of Goetic Evocation
My favourite of the Gamma Knife antimetal metal trilogy is probably the most mobile cut there. The guitarwork here is potentially the best on the album, love love love that woodwind interplay, love the incomprehensible satanchants, and love how the whole thing falls apart and rearranges itself at about three separate points. It carries a malaise of sorts, and that is EXACTLY what you want from this kind of diseasemetal. Bless you, Gamma Knife. | | 38 | | Kayo Dot
Blasphemy
Turbine, Hook, and Haul
the _well-patented #1 track on Blasphemy is actually pretty great! More than anything else on the album, this one is misty synthscapes and slow creeping gloom, both of which are critical strengths across most recentish incarnations of the Driverhouse. It has suspense and atmosphere and these are good enough that it doesn't matter that it still comes off as a little meandering. Great track, almost great enough to take us up another tier, but I have patience and so shall you.
Also, under 50% of the way through and we are officially DONE with Blasphemy. Ngl I'm kinda surprised it took that long. | | 37 | | Kayo Dot
Hubardo
The Wait of the World
Lest anyone forget, Hubardo is a fucking ginormous album which, as the cosmos dictates, means it gets a ginormous closer. The Wait of the World is 14 minutes long and although you *kinda* totally feel it by the end, it is also entertaining and cleaning as hell, in turn. The Big Band Bonks Off opening minutes sound like what people who have never heard the Mars Volta probably imagine the Mars Volta sound like (silly as shit but also mad fun), and there are some lovely mysteriousfloaty keys that cast a positive angle on whatever concluding cryptic storytime nonsense TD takes forever to croon at length over the album's final minutes by virtue of sounding quite nice. This is another album-only cut for me, but it's a bigass badass closer and it's hard to imagine Hubardo going out any other way. Chonk. | | 36 | | Kayo Dot
Moss Grew On The Swords And Plowshares Alike
Void in Virgo
Ooo look at that, we're almost halfway through the list, but we're UNDER halfway through Moss... ! What a positive sign! Void In Virgo is a decent indication of the newboi's quality, but it's perhaps the least representative stylistically; by far the most synthspaced out, by far the least metallic. The tones here are l u s h and it drifts beauteously, though perhaps a little much for my liking --- and yet all this is dust in the void compared to the all-trumping trump card that it has quite possibly the only rousing catchy melodicvocal CHORUS motif in the entirety of Driverdom!!! Pity we only hear it twice in 9 minutes. | | 35 | | Kayo Dot
Hubardo
The First Matter (Saturn in the Guise of Sadness)
ummm so, for all the 0 people who haven't heard Hubardo and are reading this anyway, the way that album works is that the first third is a wayward fenderbender oddball metal romp, and then it cuts back and there's a 20ish minute lacuna in the form of 2 long songs that do introspective grotto things until the album is ready to get heavy again. The First Matter is the first of these, which is why it is named The First Matter. it is a nice slowburning spacerock/postpunk/goth trickle with hazyfazy textures and gratifying bass presence. is it a long transition piece or a proper song? I do not care! | | 34 | | Kayo Dot
Blue Lambency Downward
Blue Lambency Downward
Damn, it's been like 20 places since the last BLD song, almost like we're talking about a really great album with a couple of hard duds hmmmm.
The title track is a weird one, even by Kayo standards - this was possibly their first song I ever listen to, and it didn't take me long to realise that the combo off miffed and intrigued that it stirred up in me was very much not a first-time thing. It's a tale of three tales now! The introduction and first vocal segment are perfect woodland minxspook vibes that set the scene for the album perfectly, the central psychedelic washing machine portion is something that I'll never get my head completely straight around, and the final section where everything stops and starts over and over and very memorable but slightly unsettling vocal motifs are wailed at length is something I've learnt to love I guess. Very good song, if a bit of a rough swallow. | | 33 | | Kayo Dot
Blue Lambency Downward
TIER: THE BEST OF THE REALLY GOOD SONGS THAT I CANNOT AND WILL NOT QUITE SWEAR BY
The Useless Ladder
I really really really really really really really really really want to put this one like 2 places higher, but it doesn't have quite enough going for it. It's the inverse of the BLD t/t in that sense - everything here is palatable as hell, but it's so bare bones and succinct that it has a slight interlude pheromone going on. A well-placed pseudolude it is two, breaking up BLD's two finest cuts like an ominous skit in a pantomime from limbo. More memorable spooky stuff, love. | | 32 | | Kayo Dot
Coffins on Io
Library Subterranean
Woah woah, there's another album that hasn't made an appearance for quite a while. Noice. Coffins is up there with Blue Lambency and now I guess Moss... when it comes to the middle belt of not-quite-masterpiece rly great KD records so ain't that nice. Library Subterranean shows off a lot of its finest qualities and, indeed, finest moments - everything is all smexy nerdy futuregoth perfection until the song plunges into flashing sirens and runaway guitarmelt, and it's an awesome high stakes car chase that looses all its stakes because it repeats for a literal eternity and nothing changes or happens. Not intense, not cool. A waste, honestly - this track could have gone much further. | | 31 | | Kayo Dot
Plastic House on Base of Sky
Amalia's Theme
welp, that makes PHOBOS the second album we can cross out for this list. gg. I was pleasantly surprised that Amalia's Theme made it this high tbqh, but it's easily the most convincing showcase of the various things its album does right, so I guess it deserves it. those juicy synth tones are backed by a juicy MOTIF here, and the difference is night and day; its progression and rhythm is poised in between semigroove and antimatter at all times, and while i'd have appreciated just a tiny bit more substance, it's still enough to swing by. lovely lovely. | | 30 | | Kayo Dot
Coffins on Io
Spirit Photography
this track is probably too long, but does have a great spooky smog-rearranging-itself-into-memory-smoke atmosphere and a strong spooky chorus and good saxophone so i like it and it as a good closer, nice one Coffins. | | 29 | | Kayo Dot
Moss Grew On The Swords And Plowshares Alike
Spectrum of One Colour
I'm a little unsure about where to put this one hmm, could be as many as 5 places higher or lower and time will tell and potentially cast it further in one direction or the other. But for the time being, it is badass and stays right here!!! This is the shortest cut from the new album, and - boi! - one of the heaviest. It's twitchy and anxious and infectious and full of nervous tension and delusory parasitosis vibes, which freak me out but I love. Things get crushing later on and phwoar baby you'd better believe in those growls. Not quite a banger, but not far off and plenty engaging I like it. | | 28 | | Kayo Dot
Hubardo
The Second Operation (Lunar Water)
part the SECOND of the two operations in the middle of the album Hubardo is the longer and sparser and more nebulous one, and I like it better because it's prettier and because gorgeous chamber arrangements are perhaps better than trudgy spacerock psychjams within the world of the album Hubardo. I feel that - massive generalisation - a lot of Toby D's Kayo Dot compositions from Coyote onwards are geared more towards tone・timbre・mood・[dynamix] than specifically nice melodies or riffs or twinkles, but this is quietly lovely on all counts. how nice. | | 27 | | Kayo Dot
Coffins on Io
Offramp Cycle, Pattern 22
ooooh baby, this night cruisin' post-punkin' evil-Grease hotrod is a real delight and quintessentially Coffins. Toby and the gang are driving a car, the vibe is dark and the air is catchy. there is a groovy bassline and you can sortof dance to this if you choose. quite unusually for KD, said Vibe finds itself actively bolstered by decent lyrics! Toby goes full bladerunner highway junkie and result is catchy, slick, creepy, quotable and infectious almost like a pop song! i would go so far as to call this the best David Bowie song in the KD canon. it also has a magnificent outro loop that reminds me of the Simpsons Hit and Run and is good enough to last forever, which is good because it really nearly does ! | | 26 | | Kayo Dot
Hubardo
TIER: SONGS I WILL HECKIN SWEAR BY
Crown-In-The-Muck
The first of Hubardo's really excellent heavy cuts, mmm yh. Crown-In-The-Muck takes a while to gear up, working its way through chilly arps and ominous horns and occasionally sounding something close to playful until nature takes its course and it hits a miasma of a sludgy doom horrorchorus and all manner of frights unfold. I love many things about this, including some individual riffs (!!!), but one of the main Things is that it keeps its groove and pace with high discipline, occasionally cracking out the odd drum shatterburst but otherwise schmoozing along like a well-oiled black heart over evil packice. It is dark and exciting and other things also | | 25 | | Kayo Dot
Coffins on Io
The Assassination of Adam
Phwoar boy, I somehow forgot about this one before weighing up this list - goodness knows why, it stands out like a sore thumb on Coffins' vaguely neon suspensescapes! It's a terrifying noir banger, kinda a shit-hits-the-fan moment, except the album so far has been prepping you for a thriller climax with a couple of evil corp cops and a ghost, and the reality is more an underground empire of Kthulu worshippers or some Squid Game scenario invested in actual organ harvesting, idk. That is the tone. There is chaos and darkness and woodwind, and tbh it's pretty impressive to hear KD make a song this heavy without resorting to metal tropes; Coffins' goth palette is its good sexy self on this, even if you can feel it being strained to its limits. Yes to paranoid heavygoth bombardments. Anyway, I was initially going to place Adam a little higher, but then I also remembered that it's a bit of a one-trick. Too bad - but also, so good | | 24 |  | Kayo Dot
Choirs of the Eye
Wayfarer
OMG A CHOIRS SONG OUTSIDE OF THE TOP 5 yh ikr epic. Wayfarer is epic and beautiful, but hot damn it's too elegant! Too pretty! Too clean! It's ~~~kinda~~~ perfect, but it doesn't demand nearly as much of its listener as the other songs on Choirs - and if nothing is being demanded of you, what do you get in return! Nothing!! It is *nice* that Choirs has a classicalchamber epic prog rock track midway through that only works in melodies and romantic lyrics, but I never felt like Wayfarer had enough going on to sit entirely comfortably on that tracklist. so there. Anyway, in the same way that The Wait of the World is the Mars Volta for people who don't know the Mars Volta, this is King Crimson for people who don't know King Crimson (whoever the hell that is). absolutely wonderful piece but it doesn't cater to the right fetishes | | 23 | | Kayo Dot
Moss Grew On The Swords And Plowshares Alike
The Knight Errant
Time for another NEW SONG!!! As per ever, this placement is a little tentative *but* The Knight Errant is a hot ticket ! It hits the ball out of the park in the opening notes - now *there's* a creepy avant-hook!! - and then drags you along deliciously perniciously slowly for 8minutes of raspy fantastical suspensechurn, ft. many many growls and slow tempo oddrhythms yes. The exboys of ex-maudlin of the mthrfuckin WELL cook up a treat of an atmospheric metal doombacking, and they carry it all the way up here - and yes this track is metal as all fuck. Driver's ever so slightly melodramatic doomgrowls recall the early days of motW where doom was very much the order of the day and Byron was the main deathlord on the mic (we're talking Psychobells here, Bath casuls). Anyway, it's clicked harder for me with every listen and is most cert absolute defo confirmed a badass as swampshit opener. There are more openers still to come. I guess KD are good at openers XD | | 22 | | Kayo Dot
Blue Lambency Downward
Clelia Walking
Clelia (?!!) is kinda the postergirl (!) of Blue Lambency for me - it's atmospheric as all hell, initially hard to read, seemingly a little meandery, but spellbindingly paced and ultimately very smartly realised.
Those are too many words. I choose one: "spellbinding" - there's something fae and warped and distantly warm about this whole album, like some kind of ambiguous but not harmful and tantalisingly out of reach naturemagic, and this track teases it particularly well. Shit's a long, winding woodland path with inconsistent levels of light and a generous quantity of unexpected tones and instruments - Clelia walks, alright! She walks over rustling keys and a nervous violin and even clamorous guitars! Watch her go!! And then, when she's done walking, Toby D shows up and ends things on the line "Come back and I'll tell you more...": absolutely the kind of snarkydick energy I can jive with. Great song. | | 21 | | Kayo Dot
Coyote
Cartogram Out Of Phase
Oof. Where to start. Shivers. Most of Toby Driver's stuff feels like primo imagination stimulus to me, strange sounds evoking strange spaces, or sometimes familiar ones in strange lights. Even at its most *out there*, it still invites that kind of creative engagement, the music drawing links to wider atmospheres, the lyrics often near-arbitrary conduits for associated feelings. One thing leads to another, and those wonderful murky compositions are the path along which it all happens
Cartogram Out Of Phase is the total opposite. This track isn't an imagination springboard, it's a morbid black hole. There are words for it - short, funereal, dirgelike, austere - but I don't like using them because the whole *feel* of this thing isn't something that suggests or demands wider association or imagination, but rather an uncomfortable emotional drain that I don't really want to try articulating outside of my own heart. That's as far as I'll go; unique, horrible track. | | 20 | | Kayo Dot
Hubardo
Passing the River
One of the side effects of Hubardo's standing as a Long Epic Album Composed Of Many Distinct Songs is that, more than any other KD, the big_twists take place over its entire tracklist and not so much within individual tracks. Not so on Passing The River! This track is maybe the most unpredictable weirdo journey on the album, and it's a treat! It's also remarkably chill, almost catchy (animals and insects, bby) until it isn't - and then it starts f・ckng with us as much through minimalism as maximalism! It's a cleverly structured piece, easily one of the least constrained by Hubardo's sometimes overwhelming xpermntal METAL brief and one of its most satisfying cuts on repeat listen. Shrewd shit ! | | 19 |  | Kayo Dot
Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue
___ On Limpid Form
I can hold it off no longer: it's time for a Dowsing song. On Limpid Form is potentially maybe the most controversial song in the whole Kayo Dot canon, for the simple dumb reason that it pairs a short(ish) stretch of disarmingly palatable prog rock whimsy with a 12 minute marathon of droning clanging rackety guitarstuff and - controversy point! - it sounds awesome. That melodic early song-within-a-song is excellent, but perhaps a little too clean (see: Wayfarer). No matter; that outro gives it all the edge in the metaverse. It's a situational thing, but the album flow accommodates it perfectly - in all honesty, I probably wouldn't like those 12 mins half as much if they weren't such a perfect cleanse of the soul in advance of the borderline immaterial following track Amaranth the Peddler's zany fairyhangover nirvana expanse. It is what it is and Dowsing is the bee's knees. Dope. | | 18 | | Kayo Dot
Moss Grew On The Swords And Plowshares Alike
Epipsychidion
Moss... is *maybe* the most metuhl album in the KDiscog and motW's early death/doom roots really show through the reunion roster, BUT the bulk of the record feels intensely focused, anchored to a songwriting discipline that doesn't allow for the colourful digressions or explosive changes of tone that once ran as motW's lifeblood. this is maybenice, but what's even nicer is that this track is a rollercoaster blowout - it's heavyDot going OFF on one on all cylinders on melodic and violent and limpid form and it sounds glorious. don't even try to keep track of the structure here, this song unpacks and repacks and contorts itself into a multitude of blistering guises and then it burns out by way of approx 5 minutes of gnarly drifty well deserved drone metal, which is a just about adequate time window to sit there spangled purring mmmm what a treat. mmyhssss awesome closer | | 17 | | Kayo Dot
Coffins on Io
The Mortality Of Doves
As everyone ever knows, Coffins on Io is easily one of the most consistent KD albums without quite landing on the top shelf - it's one vaguely accessible retrofuture gothscape after another, and putting its songs in ranked order was a little tricky bc they're all mostly great - but The Mortality of Doves is the best because it's the longest and most atmospheric and most indicative that there might be a sense of something Epic And Captivating the other side of the dirty windscreens and musty smartphones and ghost tech that the rest of the album largely confines its scope to. We know this because there is a really excellent Epic bass riff that is repeated five hundred million times because it freakin deserves it. That's good songwriting for you. Coffins is also a treat for Tobby's vocal hooks, and most of the best ones are on this song. Convenient?! Well, yes. | | 16 | | Kayo Dot
Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue
Immortelle and Paper Caravelle
Awwwww this is the softest cutest most willowy dandelion seedhead of a song ever. It's like 10 minutes long and nothing happens except one cute verse and a few nice chords and some trumpets and that is enough because the inner harmony is so strong and so soothing mmm I want to wake up next to this track every morning. It doesn't quite get full marks because there's a nagging sense that if you try to hug it it will likely disperse into the ether, but it's as close to the platonic ideal of perfect truthlove as lovely pretty immaterial things come (actually that's a lie - we can and will get a little closer in a few places' time stay POSTED) | | 15 | | Kayo Dot
Hubardo
Thief
i remember when this dropped as a pre-release single and i sent it to my aspiring music student buddy and he said it was pure awfulness and then i remembered that he was a periphery fan and now we haven't spoken in years. this was for other reasons, but maybe this song STOLE our friendship uhuh. ANYWAY, this is one of Hubardo's fun cuts and was a great choice of single - it covers a lot of ground in short order, tearing away at metalrabies before doing heavy slow melodic 7thchord stuff before picking up and riproaring through a *quotable* finale (that final line hnng). Thief is a good time yo, and perhaps more than any other song in the KDverse it bounces off its Weighty Narrative in a way that could potentially be organic?? but is definitely upbeat. shit's intense as hell but somewhat playful and always going from strength to strength, love it | | 14 | | Kayo Dot
Hubardo
And He Built Him a Boat
Kayo Dot's one and only creepy backwater musical theatre majestic gateway track. Good fucking mems, all told - I remember losing my shit several times over when this dropped as our first glimpse of Hubardo and, for such a relatively accessible song, its hooks hold up remarkably well so many years later ! That haunting tremolo motif and those elegant verses are clean and pure and intriguing, but the real delight here is in *backing vocals* of all things [gasp]. Makes me wish Toby did things with supporting vox more often, but I guess that means more mouths to pay and expectations to feed, pfft. Anyway, if there's one big catchy great single in the Driververse, this is IT! of course it's moody as all fuck. | | 13 | | Kayo Dot
Blue Lambency Downward
TIER: SHE LOVES YOU YEAH YEAAAH YEAAAAAH
The Awkward Wind Wheel
Hahahaaa this song is crazy man oh heck, BLD is a soundtrack to tripping magical mystical balls in the forest of ersatz animals or whatever, but at this point things get abruptly volatile and the tempo goes way up and the band are suddenly playing a million weird-catchy melodies that the rest of the album seems to have been very actively evading (excepting the aforementioned cheapo lounge on Right Hand) and it's a couple of microfibres away from being a total mess but oh man, the energy is right here. It's a banger??? I guess??? probably a fair bit underrated and definitely one of the band's coolest instrumentals mmm that forest is a freaky place alright | | 12 | | Kayo Dot
Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue
Gemini Becoming the Tripod
Toby Driver's Artaud hour for occult vocal torture and supreme tentacle love strain is equal parts superparody of whatever your turtlenecked latte sipping AnCo coldplaying hipster imagines avant garde metal to be and also midkey bitchin fantastic. I don't know if KD have any other track that owns its ridiculousness quite so well as this one, and it helps that the section in question in sandwiched between a gorgeous instrumental opening that sums up early Dot perfectly in and of itself (Mia really was the biz huh) and a nice off kilter distortionmelt guitar outro that is yes, indeed, heavy and ended up being the project's farewell to metal for many years. This is a heavy song. it contorts and wretches and is too much but also exactly right and it is probably a good thing that Toby doesn't have any other pieces that tried to repeat it. ideal choke anthem. | | 11 | | Kayo Dot
Gamma Knife
Gamma Knife
It has been 28 places since the last song on Gamma Knife; lest there be any doubt, the title-track is by far the strongest cut on offer there. It is eerie, oh goodness, sparse interplay between piano and guitar supporting a vocal performance that packs an uncomfortable amount of conviction into a borderline disembodied register. The name of the game here is CHILLS and halfmemories and dusty forgotten objects and a faint lingering shiver that says that *something* is out there, nanometres beyond the visible spectrum and already further into our world than it should be. This is a haunting and it is perfect. Hubardo dredged up much of the same territory for the Second Matter, and TD's solo work certainly has a lot in the same vein, but this track remains a high watermark for his personal supremacy of spook, an irresistible intuitionwarning against spending too much time in dusty rooms where no-one is listening. | | 10 | | Kayo Dot
Coyote
Calonyction Girl
Top 10!!!! Chills intensify further mmm: Coyote is a tough pill to swallow, but its opener maps out its ballpark of despair with relative directness and astounding bleakness. even then, it took me a while to learn to love it; a lot of the album is a too little much of a lightless gothbassy sprawl to get my claws into and while Calonyction Girl certainly has moments of that inclination, it draws them all back to far more substantial nuggets of great songwriting. case in point, things are on the verge of falling apart entirely by the two-third mark, but Driver pulls them back to a mechanically repetitious coda that draws breath from a single stroke of Matsumiya's violin like a dying animal gulping water. everything else about this whole song and album feels *wrong*, but hearing it come together in a harmony of sorts at that one point is perhaps the most awful, disturbing moment of the lot. a slow grower, but oh so worth it. | | 9 | | Kayo Dot
Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue
Amaranth the Peddler
AND AMARANTH THE PEDDLER WAXES POETIC TO MNEMOSYNE Alright, confession: this is probably the hardest song on this whole list of songs to rank in the appropriate slot, and the reason for this has less to do with its quality and more with the fact that I hardly consider it a song to begin with. Yeah. Amaranth is a long murmury sleepverse attached to 14 minutes of sparse pluckings and shimmers that sound like whatever it sounds like when an album takes a very long time to end and everyone knows it. The thought of following On Limpid Form's 12 minute deathfeedbacker with *that* should be a sick joke, but as it happens I utterly adore the vibe of this antisong and would happily bask in its moonswoon until my dozy zany eyes too deliver lunacy. This is the real deal. This is what graceless dreamers think they're talking about when they describe such uncosmic works as the Sigur Ros brackets and Laughing Stock with other people's literature degrees. This is a beautiful waste out of time that comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere. Fuck music, this is what moments are for. And now, here are eight pieces of actual music that are even better. Yum. | | 8 | | Kayo Dot
Moss Grew On The Swords And Plowshares Alike
The Necklace
Okay... this is new, and a little awkward and maybe a little unnecessarily personal, and mayyyybe it has a bit of recency bias that I'm allowing myself to indulge bc I v rarely get that kind of discog-reshuffling hype over new shit from bands I actually like and respect and am enjoying it while it lasts, but wow, this song is the bomb. Moss' doom leanings get subsumed into a delirious whirl of synthed out vaguely-black-metal and while this sounds like my worst nightmare in many ways, there's something utterly riveting about it. Toby D's harsh vocal performance is perhaps my favourite ever and it's paired against a delicate drum take that sounds more like it's trying to hold him together than to exacerbate the song's *absolutely timestopping* levels of suspense.
There's also something reassuringly simple about it - for all its harshness and particularity, The Necklace is just an arrestingly passionate performance balanced on the brink of restraint and paired with a couple of choice chord progressions. For something so chilling and "heavy", it's astonishingly beautiful - and if that's not a classic KD trait through and through, I couldn't tell you what is. | | 7 | | Kayo Dot
Hubardo
TIER: 7 MODS 7 BODS 7 GODS
Zlida Caosgi (To Water the Earth)
Okay guys, I KNOW that Kayo Dot is mostly a long moody expatiencerimental vibe for people with short beers to stroke soft objects to as they lean back slowly into their slow moods, but Zlida Caosgi is *not like the other Kayo Dots*. This is a fucking zinger, a banger, a speedyspeedy thrillride with a dizzying number of hooks and excitements. And SYNTHS, holy fucking shit, that central section where someone sets off gandalf's fireworks in the versynthes hall of mirrors is a ball and a half and don't we all know it. Sure there are other explosions and such like in the Dotverse, but this one's adrenaline rush and good ol' dumb fun are unmatched. Hooray for weirdo metal < 3 | | 6 | | Kayo Dot
Blue Lambency Downward
Symmetrical Arizona
A few years ago* you could have convinced me to stick this gorgeous spooky smokey psychedelic guitar solo haze ft. conjoined excellent edgy prog song a few places higher, because it is impeccable and tasteful and listenable whenever tbh and I love it. The reasons why it is not higher are that the guitar is a rhythm instrument not a wanknoodle (even if this solo is still perfect) and, mainly, that I feel a *tiny* bit less positive about the haste with which that wonderful progpsych verse that the track takes foreeever to build up to, uh, ends. And how long the subsequent outro groove then lasts - all these parts are excellent, but I feel they're just a tad out of balance with each other. Not that I really care about balance; I just want to start a cult to this song and make all the members wear dark purple woodland robes and eat astral marshmallows on the nightly. FAB.
*uhhhhh [cringe]: https://www.sputnikmusic.com/list.php?memberid=538903&listid=129989 | | 5 | | Kayo Dot
Choirs of the Eye
The Manifold Curiosity
Okay sit down and don't freak out let me explain uhhhhhh, so. The Manifold Curiosity! is obviously perfect? and probably one of the best songs ever❓ and I adore it! So we are the same.
But also we're not, because there is no way this is my favourite KD. Similarish to Wayfarer, it's a liiiiiiittle bit linear, a little predictable, and a little well-behaved; sure, that finale is a demented hellstorm, but the final segment telegraphs it so clearly over such a long period of time that you're gonna be ready to handle it after your first couple of listens. I don't to handle it; I want it to *destroy* me - so, while still the opposite of disappointing, it ain't overwhelming me so much these days. The first half is a different story and obviously g o r g e o u s, like, holy mother of meat, what a beautiful climax, *but* this too hits a very very high glass ceiling because the melodies are the same elegant noodling 7th chord/arps that every experimental band ever from the 00s used when they wanted to be pretty; it almost seems more motW than a true Kayo Dot moment. Not that this matters (much), but there's something naggingly textbook on the furthest margins of this otherwise astoundingly well realised song that holds it back from being the be all and end all for me. Whatever it is, it ain't that far off. | | 4 | | Kayo Dot
Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue
Aura On an Asylum Wall
The role Aura plays in Dowsing's sequencing is quite similar to the one Manifold plays in Choir's, so I've gotta say it's *adorable* to seem them land next to each other. Big aww. The reason that Aura is higher is mainly down to edgecred - where Manifold follows an obvious road map, this one is ambiguous every step of the way; it's clear it's headed *somewhere*, but every section of this song feels like a departure from rather than an obvious successor to the one before. To that end, I LOVE that the abrupt noise meltdown that wraps it up feels like a dirty joke at the expense of the idea of a gratifying climax - the expectation hanging over me on repeat listens is more of a *ur gonna get played here* than a *ur gonna love this*, and because I hate myself and love this band, that is perfect. It also has a pretty nervous little Mos Eisley Cantina instrumental jam in the middle, and maybe my favourite Mia violin part. Idk, there are loads of instruments playing off each other and all of them sound really really good. And what a fucking excellent song title. | | 3 | | Kayo Dot
Choirs of the Eye
A Pitcher Of Summer
Toby Driver's dreamy floaty Jeff Buckley experiment is pretty as hell. It's dense and [cringe lyrical alignment moment] really does chime with my seasonal memory. I don't know - maybe there's not so much to this song in comparison to the rest of the 7tier, but I love that its development comes in waves, building up and kinda drawing back before the next part comes in, and those cute lil shymelodies are enduringly lovely and - sorry Manifold - some of the most original on Choirs. I'd never have put this in the band/album's top 3 back in the day, but it's stuck with me so perfectly that it'd be a shame not to. Also that final scream is delicious and *so* well-earned and more than a little disarming after the entire rest of the track; that's how you pull a twist - sorry Manifold. Fucking memorywaves and song waves and dynamics, man. Nice dream. | | 2 | | Kayo Dot
Choirs of the Eye
Marathon
Let's finish this: the best tracks in the Kayo dimension are the Choirs bookends and I will broke no disagreement. Marathon is the least amazing of the two because I'm not 100% convinced by the dialogue between its apocalyptically heavy first half and the ambient as all spaced out timeless fuck keyboards of its second half, but each is so individually magical that this is hardly an issue. Or maybe I'm wrong, I dunno - the first half kinda feels like having your soul dragged out of your body by ghosthooks reaching from fifty unseeable directions at once, while the second is like watching it disappear into the murky murky beyond in slow, vaguely shiny, motion. Does this mean that a full listen of Choirs induces a phantasmic, immaterially sensitive state in the listener? Quite possibly I dunno, but this a phenomenal opener and comfortably the peak of quiet floaty melodicDot, once it gets there. Mm. | | 1 | | Kayo Dot
Choirs of the Eye
The Antique
this is the best song
it does not build up, it digs down
and down
and then it gets there
and it is terrifying
and it stays there
and howls
and howls
and howls
until it cannot go on
so it stops
and then comes that midway meltdown that lives up to the avantmetal overdiscussion in a way that nothing else in this band's discog or beyond really comes close to and melts my fucking face and heart into corrosive slurry ever single time there is no surface hard enough for my hands to clutch onto with enough force to feel like i could realistically escape the moment that is doing these strange piercing violent things to my state of being and all that
it burns out before we do
and then it does an immaterial pianocroon coda that sounds like sigur ros if they were playing from purgatory instead of whatever B-B-Blissful uncanny valley
the final cadence is perfect
it is perfect
i like this band | |
JohnnyoftheWell
10.24.21 | Will update as we go along
Been on a good KD kick for the last week and a bit, but this is mainly to give y'all a tease of the upcoming new album, hype hype hypeasaurus | CottonSalad
10.24.21 | On paper I should adore this band...but I don't - maybe your enthusiasm will convert me lol | Jasdevi087
10.24.21 | oof | dedex
10.24.21 | this gonna be interesting | JohnnyoftheWell
10.24.21 | i have no enthusiasm only good memories and cold hard facts | CottonSalad
10.24.21 | whoa - i gotta go then, not a fan of either of those things. | JohnnyoftheWell
10.24.21 | there are also hidden perks | CottonSalad
10.24.21 | I initially read that as "hidden parks"...
will let you decide which I would prefer | Cimnele
10.24.21 | promising so far, no Dowsing in the bottom tiers | JohnnyoftheWell
10.24.21 | there are no hidden parks i am not a JRPG (!!!)
and here are three more i will take a bath now | tectactoe
10.24.21 | already not thrilled with WHISPER INEFFABLE so low but excited to see the rest.
we will watch your ongoing list with great interest.
CALONYCTION GIRL better be top 10, dammit. | CottonSalad
10.24.21 | I wish Sputnik was a JRPG tbh | Ryus
10.24.21 | manifold curiosity #1 or riot | JohnnyoftheWell
10.24.21 | ok here are more
calonyction girl vs manifold curiosity will be jrpg showdown for the ages
also tec, if it's any consolation, Whisper is about 10 places higher than it would have been if I'd made this list 2 yrs ago so ummm upwards!! | JohnnyoftheWell
10.24.21 | and more mhm | TalonsOfFire
10.24.21 | Quite an undertaking Johnny, I was thinking of doing this too some time, and maybe I will as a counter if you keep triggering me like by putting All the Wide World, Right Hand is the One I want, and Lethe so low! But other than those I pretty much agree so far. Despite how much I like Right Hand, I'm also not much of a stan for their post-Dowsing/pre-Hubardo work, or Blasphemy. I love Phobos and Coffins more than most though. | Teal
10.24.21 | Agreed with 42-1. | Winesburgohio
10.25.21 | good to see The Antique in #1 where it belongs
(i've now made it canon) | JohnnyoftheWell
10.25.21 | are you Fate and are you baiting me to struggle against you?? you know i love a tussle...
curious as to how Right Hand is one of the low tracks that gets a defense, always thought that was one of the more derivative picks in the KDiscog hmmm | Winesburgohio
10.25.21 | : O / just realised that Choirs of the Eye was the first album I bought in the scary world of *online* when I had to talk my Dad through the fact it wasn't a phishing scam to borrow his credit card. i was still on dial-up and i have no idea how i discovered Kayo Dot bc i wasn't browsing sput at the time. i've still got the CD!
anyway write-ups so far are delicious. scrumptious! | Lord(e)Po)))ts
10.25.21 | Man your list game is just 😷 | JohnnyoftheWell
10.25.21 | no words mr 07.09.21 Sputnik Fit Census
and that is wild and cute and i am glad for that cd and also v much agree that KD is a primo phishing scam lookalike. i won a high school essay prize comp with a thing about Dowsing and the teacher who judged it later told me that he had been fully convinced i had invented the figure of Toby Driver for the sake of having something to write on
| Koris
10.25.21 | Nice list so far, although it does hurt seeing 63 so low | JohnnyoftheWell
10.25.21 | 63 is an alien headache in slomo it is not good :[
here are more songs we are halfway there place some bets please | Winesburgohio
10.25.21 | how would in the l-l-library loft fit in, broadly, do u reckon? | JohnnyoftheWell
10.25.21 | pss-ss-s-s-s-t but that alb is one of the Important Ones that i haven't heard (the others being madonnawhore and that tartar lamb one hmm) - always had the intrigue, but i never wanted to be cursive with it and things obstructed me from doing the deed. will have to fix this sometime :[[
if it helps, Ichneumondiae would be finishing up round about now and we'd be most of the way through They Are The Shield and the new Aloevera Crucible boi too
| GhandhiLion
10.25.21 | This is bad, kayo dot sadly broke up after hubardo | GhandhiLion
10.25.21 | The bell hate smh | JohnnyoftheWell
10.25.21 | shuddup and go back to your sleigh bells | GhandhiLion
10.25.21 | Im going back to ayler bells | GhandhiLion
10.25.21 | Check Extra Life | JohnnyoftheWell
10.25.21 | i prefer Real Life
gonna do some more of these what should be next | quetzal
10.25.21 | PHOBOS is the best Kayo Dot album | JohnnyoftheWell
10.25.21 | sorry we haven't recorded the laugh track for this part of the show yet would you like it to go ハハハ or フフフ？ | quetzal
10.25.21 | moons of io is the second best, hubardo in a distant 3rd (should've been trimmed of a lot of fat). all their albums need a lot of fat trimmed though. the best Kayo Dot isn't even 1/10th as good as the first three maudlin of the Well records. | BaselineOOO
10.25.21 | ugh, like, who cares | porcupinetheater
10.25.21 | Ooh I care! (almost as much as I did before that heinous Whisper Ineffable placement!)
Keep wanting to talk about how Blasphemy is mad underrated but then its like
to get those songs higher you have to put other songs lower. Tough world. Glad it's a little brighter with Pitcher of Summer not being the lowest ranked off Choirs fuckin a | Gyromania
10.25.21 | oh snap! | porcupinetheater
10.25.21 | So delighted nothing's been knocked off from Dowsing yet | JohnnyoftheWell
10.25.21 | hey baseline, talons made a dark deep trollcavern antishower cumthread for you and ur haze brethren like last week, haste ye back there and leave these cosmopolitan mum pastures alone plz
"like to get those songs higher you have to put other songs lower"
ay indeed, but i won't pretend to feel sad about using most of that alb as a springboard for the rest of the discog | porcupinetheater
10.25.21 | Gamma Knife would be a pre good springboard if the entire surface didn't come off like a non-level cushion of lego bricks, tread careful
skronk responsibly | Gyromania
10.25.21 | our bottom 10s are identical | JohnnyoftheWell
10.25.21 | paha nice dude, gonna have to hit up the new alb and see if you can raise that to 11
and Gamma Knife is a breath of weird cute putrid air, nothing can spring it | TalonsOfFire
10.25.21 | I made a what now??
Right Hand is my second favorite on Blue Lambency, I love the spooky instrumental outro and Mia shines with her violin in particular.
Wayfarer could very well be my #1, I’m gonna have to walk this one off for a minute seeing it below all the others on Choirs and at 25. | Josh D.
10.25.21 | "Blasphemy" is one of their best songs. | Winesburgohio
10.25.21 | it's been over a decade but i remember Wayfarer being a very good *in* to the album when i didn't "get" it at first.
The Useless Ladder should absolutely be higher johnny is2g | Winesburgohio
10.25.21 | THE SHAMELESSLY DESIROUS BROKEN HAAAAAAND | tectactoe
10.25.21 | very upset to see another COYOTE masterpiece gone so early but a fine list and justifiable capsules nonetheless! | JohnnyoftheWell
10.25.21 | rest assured that coyote is easily the album i've felt worst about mostly burying thus far but mmm it's tough at the top[ward strait]
too tough for the useless ladder, although i regret that even more now :[ as for Wayfarer mmmhm i can easily see it as a gateway pick for Choirs/KD in general, but it's maybe a tad linear and a little well behaved and mayyyybe a bit overly romantic to be their best?? hold onto those thoughts - they will return!!
currently left with
Choirs: 4
Dowsing: 5
BLD: 3
Coyote: 2
Gamma: 1
Hubardo: 4
Coffins: 2
Phobos: 0
Blasphemy: 0
Moss: 3
place ur bets how will it go | Winesburgohio
10.25.21 | luvving these write-ups lad | Ryus
10.25.21 | the fact that all dowsing songs remain bodes well for this list | brainmelter
10.26.21 | will it be manifold or antique for 1 hmm 🤔 | Veldin
10.26.21 | @porcupine - Yes, Blasphemy LP is indeed mad underrated
Incredibly stoked for the new LP | porcupinetheater
10.26.21 | “ LPs only i am a coward”
Fuck the formatting, put Stained Glass on thee list | TalonsOfFire
10.26.21 | What non album tracks are there besides Stained Glass and Dead Animals | Veldin
10.26.21 | none as far as i can think up. hey johnny, can u share the new album with me, pretty please ;) | JohnnyoftheWell
10.26.21 | think those two are the only ones, but maybe there is one other?? i have a nagging feeling. haven't heard either Stained Glass or Don't Touch for ages, but might touch base and slot em in
anyway, here is another one | porcupinetheater
10.26.21 | Coyote victimized AGAIN Johnny you monster | JohnnyoftheWell
10.26.21 | Coyote makes victims of us all at times :[ | MiloRuggles
10.26.21 | this prereview marketing ploy is SELLING me
wayfarer ranking is criminal, but you know that already | dedex
10.26.21 | Mortality of Doves in top 20, nice | Frost15
10.26.21 | Is this a way to tell us you love Choirs of the Eye? Because I love it that much too haha! | TalonsOfFire
10.26.21 | Limpid Form is my least favorite on Dowsing as well. I love the first 5 minutes of it though. | Ryus
10.26.21 | dam on limpid form is probably my second favorite on dowsing | JohnnyoftheWell
10.26.21 | Dowsing is all tight and i never considered Limpid my least fav til now, but something's gotta bite the bullet :[ | Veldin
10.26.21 | Top 20! | JJKeys
10.26.21 | Oh fucjk oh shit gonna read this fully after MGotSaPA drops on Friday, but boooo for putting The Black Stone so low | Djang0
10.26.21 | Ooooo loving this list!! Thought about doing one of these | JohnnyoftheWell
10.26.21 | It came to my attention that I was on the verge of overrating The Ass of Adam, so hmmm updated and many tracks get a bump and i will add more soon | Havey
10.26.21 | goofy posr music! | JohnnyoftheWell
10.26.21 | nice 1 lou reed | TalonsOfFire
10.27.21 | I’m a little ambivalent about hearing the new one is their most metal one yet in a drone and death/doom direction. I really liked the diversions in Coffins and PHoBoS. In an interview, Toby said this is his gothic metal album with little prog or something like that, going back to the inspiration he had as a teen listening to European metal. | JohnnyoftheWell
10.27.21 | yeah, that is very much what it sounds like, but take it with a pinch of salt - like, you can feel the vibe of early motW, and the vibe of MDB and Tiamat behind that, but there's a lot of idiosyncrasies to the way it's crafted and Toby's bass performance in particular comes straight off the back of the last run off Kayo albums and has q a distinct relation to the wider doomscape (Get Out of the Tower shows this off particularly clearly). alb is miles better than PHOBOS and a slight cut above Coffins, so it paid off ig | TalonsOfFire
10.27.21 | Yeah I’m sure there’s more to it than he’s making it sound. And don’t get me wrong I like gothic metal plenty. | FadedSun
10.27.21 | Where are you hearing all of Moss already?
Oh btw, I saw "On Limpid Form" performed live, and they were banging pieces of metal live hahah. It's a lot harder to deal with when it's in a live setting. Cool song, though. Not my favorite off Dowsing, that's for sure. | GhandhiLion
10.27.21 | check this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxgERdi_av0 | JohnnyoftheWell
10.27.21 | i am at work stop sending me hentai
and live pieces of metal banging together sounds perfect and i am jel :[ time for more songs, things get sad from here | GhandhiLion
10.27.21 | https://youtu.be/Vg8V1oPDQ4Y | JohnnyoftheWell
10.27.21 | this is a kayo dot thread you will not make it sexy
especially since we are now DONE with coffins wow it was a good time byebye
more bets plz, not much left to go | Ryus
10.27.21 | nice 4 choirs and 3 dowsing songs remain | LeddSledd
10.27.21 | who is kayo dot | Ryus
10.27.21 | Kayo Dot is an American avant-garde music group. Formed in 2003 by Toby Driver after the break-up of maudlin of the Well, they released their debut album Choirs of the Eye on John Zorn's Tzadik Records that same year. Since then, Kayo Dot's lineup has drastically changed over the years. | JohnnyoftheWell
10.27.21 | KAYO DOT is an undefinable band led by composer Toby Driver. All the other projects and titles on this page are also the work of Toby Driver. Several additional titles are also available exclusively through our subscription service.
| Ryus
10.27.21 | ledd check choirs, it has all three of these things
incoherent noise, """""soundscapes""""", and just the right amount of wank :},
| LeddSledd
10.27.21 | oh fuck checking it now | JohnnyoftheWell
10.27.21 | awsm please rank every song that isn't wayfarer to save me the trouble | Ryus
10.27.21 | everyone knows it's
4. pitcher of summer
3. marathon
2. the antique
1. manifold curiosity | JohnnyoftheWell
10.27.21 | hmmm good bet, more bets plz | Veldin
10.27.21 | Johnny what’s the runtime of Moss? | JohnnyoftheWell
10.27.21 | just over an hr i think?
and @faded sorry forgot to answer, am on a digi promo | Veldin
10.27.21 | https://youtu.be/po7KsK65kd4
https://youtu.be/fTC4v6vzuNo
New interviews
| FadedSun
10.27.21 | Manifold Curiosity is #1. It has to be! Either that, or The Antique. Johnny might be an Antique kind of guy. | JohnnyoftheWell
10.27.21 | niiiice gonna peep those interviews when poss
and um sorry wrong question earlier; who can lock down the whole of the top 5 hmm? | Gyromania
10.27.21 | Can you finish this pls? This is some serious bs | Gyromania
10.27.21 | ........... | porcupinetheater
10.27.21 | Johnny r u gonna put Manifold at 4 or something and make me cry | JohnnyoftheWell
10.27.21 | cannot finish it bc none of it is prewritten and i have to blurb as i go but also here is one more uh there will be another soon ! | porcupinetheater
10.27.21 | Oh shit was not expecting Gemini to be the next Dowsing sacrifice. Song is lean-cut spooky | Gyromania
10.27.21 | Haha I'm glad I didn't cast a vote because I thought Gemini Becoming the Tripod would be top 10
| JohnnyoftheWell
10.27.21 | got a little mixed up putting Gemini ahead of Wind Wheel, but they're now up and final and the end is coming!!! | porcupinetheater
10.27.21 | Getting super stoked I stopped the Necklace a minute in when the single dropped and decided to wait on the album | JohnnyoftheWell
10.27.21 | Hmmmmmmmmmmmnocomment :]
tec had better be a happy bby | Gyromania
10.27.21 | Was just listening to Calonyction Girl earlier today. Worthy of top 10, I'd say. You should make a new tier for the top 10, no? | JohnnyoftheWell
10.27.21 | no, top 10 is just a dumb number. the next tier will be for the top 6 or 7, it's silly to pretend there's much of a gap between the gamma t/t and calonyction girl hmm
1 more and I want a nap now | TalonsOfFire
10.27.21 | The Necklace is really in your top 8? Interesting, that's a real odd one in my opinion but works for what it is. I ended up liking it a lot. | JohnnyoftheWell
10.27.21 | yes [updated lol] | TalonsOfFire
10.27.21 | Nice nice, I get that. If Zlida Caosgi (To Water the Earth) is really in your top 8 as well props for that, I always loved it too and felt was underrated. | JohnnyoftheWell
10.27.21 | Oh fuck, Zlida Caosgi. Oops. Knew there'd be one song I'd forget dammit. | Josh D.
10.27.21 | 16 and 17 need to be higher, thankz | JohnnyoftheWell
10.27.21 | you have one chance to persuade me to drop Thief to 17, everything else is off limits | GhandhiLion
10.27.21 | Can you really call yourself a kayo dot fan if the morbid curiosity isn't #1? | GhandhiLion
10.27.21 | The Mortality Of Doves is peak borecore era kayo dot. | JohnnyoftheWell
10.27.21 | that era is a mod mulholland drive basement fantasy and it is sexed up you are not expected to understand it
however, #1 is spiritual unity and this whole list is an elaborate betrayal so idk | GhandhiLion
10.27.21 | No one was expecting that. Hey! I like dark jazz almost as much as grey metal | GhandhiLion
10.27.21 | https://rateyourmusic.com/list/Distrosity/genre-coining-metal-bands/
blessed list | Gyromania
10.28.21 | STILL not done. I'm reporting this list | porcupinetheater
10.28.21 | Spoiler alert
7. Pitcher
6. Zlida
5. Marathon
4. Manifold
3. Aura
2. Symmetrical
1. Antique | JohnnyoftheWell
10.28.21 | Okay I am trying I am trying, final 5 wooooo | Veldin
10.28.21 | On “In the L-L-Library Loft” (2005): “This is basically a Kayo Dot album under the composer’s name. Nearly all the performers on this record were members of Kayo Dot at the time” - Toby via Bandcamp write up | Gyromania
10.28.21 | Putting antique above manifold is an automatic fail I'm pretty sure | JohnnyoftheWell
10.28.21 | toby d was always better at death/doom than at 00s postrock tropes, so that's a big no | Gyromania
10.28.21 | Wrong as fuck | Gyromania
10.28.21 | I have to give props for marathon being in the top 5 tho. Fucking underrated song | porcupinetheater
10.28.21 | Fucking love Pitcher getting up so high Hell yeah | JohnnyoftheWell
10.28.21 | Pitcher the Baby
...and we are done. fuck. no more procrastination for that Moss review. | Djang0
10.28.21 | Epic list beautiful writeups | JohnnyoftheWell
10.28.21 | glad you enjoyed :]:] | brainmelter
10.28.21 | nice I semi-called #1 and I love how high Pitcher is here. Great read | Jasdevi087
10.28.21 | This mf actually put The Antique at 1 words fail me | Winesburgohio
10.28.21 | Johnny thank you so much for this. Every installment was an absolute treat. Love it! Also our top 7 would be insanely similar except sub A Pitcher for Gemini and Marathon for Wayfarer MAYBE PERHAPS | Havey
10.28.21 | Thank you so much for validating my son's opinions! :) | MiloRuggles
10.28.21 | TWO TWO TWO sigur ros namedrops!
Marvelous work, you've got me ultrahype to revisit their discog (again(again(again ad infinitum))) | Winesburgohio
10.28.21 | :japanese_goblin: | GhandhiLion
10.28.21 | 1 is correct | tectactoe
10.28.21 | I will take a Coyote track in the Top 10. Well done, Johnny boy, even if the CHOIRS bias is a little strong 😉 | tectactoe
10.28.21 | I also concur that The Antique is the best track from that record. (I just don’t think it’s their best record 😃) | JohnnyoftheWell
10.28.21 | thanks PERHAPSkiwigang and responsible adults it has been fun
and i am bias and unprofess :[ | TalonsOfFire
10.28.21 | Nice job Johnny, you put a lot of work into this. It’s an interesting ranking, props for putting the Antique at 1, I always loved it almost as much Manifold and Wayfarer. | Zakusz
10.28.21 | The opening guitar line of Void in Virgo is one of the best little musical moments of my life. | GhandhiLion
10.28.21 | new maudlin of the wells sounds promising | FadedSun
10.28.21 | In live versions of Marathon, they've played the chords to the Final Fantasy prelude sometimes haha. When it's during the spacey ambient section. | TalonsOfFire
10.28.21 | I just heard Moss Grew... in full, and I might like it even less than Blasphemy?? Maybe I should go to the dr. today and get my brain checked... | JohnnyoftheWell
10.28.21 | yeah i am too sleepy to turn this into a bit that is an outlandishly fraught take and no one can help you, like, even if you change your mind at some point your brain will still be the same brain that once reached that conclusion this might be endgame eeeek | Veldin
10.28.21 | FULL ALBUM STREAM:
https://www.invisibleoranges.com/kayo-dot-stream-interview/?fbclid=IwAR07L6KbPgcdtNSRXlEHxzXnGhRIUsQW4KN9X7AkV_WDL6s2lBYKPZYRtp0 | vacantPlanet
10.28.21 | Zlida Caosgi forever
cool list, gonna have to revisit some of these | Winesburgohio
10.28.21 | i've been returning to Blue Lambency Downward and i have a reckon: there was a subset of people (myself included) who wish Radiohead went even weirder and jazzier after Amnesiac. i think Blue Lambency Downward is the closest thing we'll get to that - which is to say BLD represents a direction the best band in the world could have chosen, which tells you enough. such a superb album | GhandhiLion
10.28.21 | ^Where did you find this | neekafat
10.29.21 | They don't love you like I love you | Winesburgohio
10.29.21 | im about to type a sentence that i don't think has ever been written in humankind's history
i discovered maudlin of the Well, and by extension Kayo Dot, on Bebo | evilford
10.30.21 | Haha johnny hehe good list I haven't really jammed this band in about a decade | JJKeys
11.12.21 | Alright I am back to chastise you Johnny about An Eye for a Lie being their worst song
u are wrong :^) it's like the one interesting thing on Assphemy | Crawl
11.13.21 | Amazing list! I'd be interested in your "motW trax ranked" and "misc Toby trax ranked" (solo, Tartar Lamb, Bloodmist, Alora Crucible etc.) | JohnnyoftheWell
11.13.21 | oh goodness, hadn't thought about a motW list, but maybe that should happen! would probs be harder but more time efficient so i can't see why not lol
"it's like the one interesting thing on Assphemy"
you are actually probably v v v right, but that is no shield against its generous level of astral suckage :[[[[ :]]]] | Ryus
02.07.23 | going thru another phase with these fellas get ready for my hot takes | JohnnyoftheWell
02.07.23 | o shit gimme that second operation bby | JJKeys
02.07.23 | also rank Toby's solo songs too | Ryus
02.07.23 | i may have gotten ahead of myself when i said the black stone was top 10
top 15 maybe though? glorious tune. the dude on rym who said it sounded like grendel in his lair was spot on lmao | Ryus
02.07.23 | my ranking of their albums would be
1. blue lambency
2. dowsing
3. choirs
4. husbando
5. coyote
6. coffins
7. gamma knife
8. phobos
9. blasphemy
havent heard the newest one yet | Ryus
02.07.23 | symmetrical arizona is so good, christ. maybe my favorite song of theirs | porcupinetheater
02.07.23 | Forever cry at the Whisper Ineffable rank | JohnnyoftheWell
02.07.23 | more like forever cry at whisper ineffable
and yeah symmetrical arizona is perf. probably used to be my fave at one point | Ryus
02.07.23 | i listened to husbando twice yesterday and still dont feel like ive scratched the surface.
in fact ive listened to this band a ton and dont feel like ive scratched the surface in general lol. | Jasdevi087
02.07.23 | that's because you gotta scratch and sniff |
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