Kinski - Down Below It’s Chaos (Sub Pop)
4/5
By: Charlie Potter
As you may have noticed, I've been reviewing a lot of noise recently. So Kinski is quite a relief for me. The first track is such fun, straight up rock, devoid of vocals, basically your classic one riff rocker opener track complete with fuzz pedal, motorbikes and build ups, strip backs, moustaches and shades. Down Below It's Chaos is by this point sounding like the sort of album that is going to make me somehow develop some manly stubble. Not possible I'm afraid, not possible at all. But I can pretend, I'll just wear the bandanna and act like I've got stubble.
Elsewhere, more great riffs and some wicked vocal melodies that sound like Sonic Youth playing freedom rock with deep south road trip dust bowl drums. Yeah man, we're all in this together, f**k the man. God, I wish I had a beer right now. Sitting here writing stuff on my own...
...But hell, Good riffs. Gooood riffs. Where would we be without them, huh? Something to keep the blood pumping. Down Below It's Chaos has a lot of this, but a lot of other stuff too - it's got vast, imposing, reflective finger picked guitar stuff on it, it's got pleasant euphoric desert drone parts that make you feel something so fundamental to being human, a sound so intuitive and basic you cant really put it into words. Apart from the words 'psychedelic triumph' and 'rock-out jams'.
I guess Kinski have pretty much made a stoner album, but there is something about it that just seems different, like it's too innocent to be so genre specific. Also, you don't commonly think of stoner bands as having this many strings to their bow. It makes a lot of sense that Kinski would do a split with Acid Mothers Temple, as there's a really strong psychedelic undercurrent that becomes more and more apparent the more time you spend with the album.
By the end of Down Below It's Chaos, you're left with a pretty nice mix of fun, motivation and calm reflection. But when Kinski are at their best is clearly when they are chugging out those riffs, and refreshingly for a largely instrumental psychedelic rock band, a couple of these tracks such as 'Child Had To Catch a Train' and 'Passwords & Alcohol' are more than worthy DJ numbers.
Another thing that separates Kinski from the world of straight up stoner is that there are a lot of parts that you don't notice at first, as in the beginning of 'Passwords & Alcohol' were at first you are just desperately waiting for it to kick in, when you listen back to it a few times and the excitement of the big riff wears off a smidgen you realise that the layered, sparkly guitars are really not your usual generic stoner jangle intro - after a while, you begin to realise there's more than just luck in finding them to this band's fantastic melodies.
A grower with a hell of a lot to it, and also a lot of straight up fun, it all finishes with the soaring 'Silent Biker Type', at which point I genuinely found myself looking at psychedelic art work on the internet whilst listening rather intently. And I heavily endorse the use of art of Keiichi-Tanaami to give an added dimension to Down Below It's Chaos.
Download a legal MP3 of 'Punching Goodbye Out Front' from 'Down Below It's Chaos' HERE.
Artists in this article: Kinski
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