Knifeworld - Clairvoyant Fortnight CDEP
SKU
BR 008
Knifeworld is the solo project of guitarist/singer/composer/media figure Kavus Torabi, who has also worked with/works with Guapo and Cardiacs. His first album, Buried Alone: Tales of Crushing Defeat, was a real solid winner, but it was a 'project' with Kavus' many musical mates lending a hand as needed; it wasn't an actual band effort. Now Knifeworld is an actual, live, sweating, performing, arguing, drinking (accent on the arguing and drinking, I am certain) band and this 1st release by the band is exactly what you would hope for; it's lyrically witty and musically strong.
Check out the 'official video' below, have a laugh, and judge for yourself!
"I keep waiting for Knifeworld to announce another full length release, but quite honestly, their EPs have a lot more in them than most of the hour long albums I come across. Their songs are convoluted affairs, in which arrangement and orchestration are indistinguishable from composition, and the contrasts between sections (although they make perfect sense in context) are far more pronounced than is commonly the case in anything that could be described as ‘rock’. Although it has to be said that most of the time describing this music as rock is about as informative as describing Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as a wheeled vehicle. The musical language certainly digs into the bran-tub of rock, but Clairvoyant Fortnight sports a long enough spoon to sup with jazz fusion and twentieth-century classical music (the latter particularly evident in the use made of wind instruments). There’s some very effective sectional scoring, different pieces of the ensemble trading phrases like characters exchanging lines in a verse drama, and the timbral potential of the various instrumental resources is exploited to the full.
Without analysing the lyrics in depth, I’d risk describing the themes of these three songs as humorously dysphoric, witty and profound; the authorial voice is possessed of a certain unhinged whimsy that harks back to a distinctively British psychedelic tradition, as does the melodic and harmonic palette. Key centres are unstable and contingent, but the music is theatrically chromatic rather than overtly atonal, and serially diatonic rather than dissonant. The phrasing is rhythmically complex, with stress patterns that turn themselves inside out at a moment’s notice, but Knifeworld wear it lightly, and always sound relaxed, even loose, although the material is always performed with precision. If you were wondering where to look for rock’s avant-garde, other than the extremities of metal, it’s here: this is profoundly beautiful music, conceived and executed with outstanding musicianship and creativity."-Oliver Arditi