A long, tiring, but for once quite enjoyable day at work today. At home again now though with a nicely chilled glass of Chablis and another of the recent releases on The Organised Music from Thessaloniki blasting away in the room behind me. This one is credited to Syndrones / Kostis Kilymis, which I don’t really understand as it appears to be just a solo album from Kostis, his third I think. Kostis is a great guy who has very kindly sent me his releases as they have appeared over the last two or three years, plus has even asked my opinion on some of his unreleased material, so I feel quite close to his work as I have watched it progress.
On past releases Kostis has blended roughly manhandled electronics with more composed elements and field recordings to good effect. This new release, called Just another daily bummer (great title!) continues Kostis’ route away from tight structures and carefully placed sound material into a much more immediate, vivid improvisational approach. All of the sounds were recorded in one hit on one day, and only some edges trimmed a few days later in the edit. JADB is quite a harsh, angry CD. The first four of the six tracks, all titled Sweet hits of the sweetest sound involve long passages of squealing, abrasive noise along with clicking, spluttering pulses of looping electronics and quieter periods where the detail in the sound becomes clear. If in places you could be forgiven for headbanging along, these moments do not last long enough to allow the listener to settle into one drone. Sounds are cut short abruptly and others begin just as fast, appearing in the spaces between the rasping blasts of noise. A recurring motif happens on several occasions at the end of tracks; a roar might be cut dead to end one piece, followed by a few seconds silence, only to be immediately reprised at the start of the next. This trick occurs between tracks four and five, where the last of the Sweet hits of the sweetest sound tracks dies away as a fizzing, crackling field of static comes to a halt, only to reappear soon after at the start of the first two tracks called Stop trying to explain.
I can’t quite make my mind up if JADB is a lighthearted bundle of noisy fun or something more detached, angry and aggressive. I sense the latter, which would make this Kostis’ most personal, powerful statement on disc yet. In places the music spills out with great force, and elsewhere the dramatic shifts of dynamic suggest a tense, agitated recording session.The sounds used are less to my taste than on some of Kostis’ previous work, but certainly there is a confidence and singularity to this disc that vastly outweighs what he has done in the past.
This is Kostis’ third solo disc then, a format that he is really beginning to master as a vehicle for self expression. I think now I would also like to hear him play in a collaborative setting as well though, to see how the barbed statements of these recordings can translate into other styles of playing. For now this is a kind of thoughtful noise/improv crossover, the structure of which I enjoyed a great deal even if I found myself reaching for the volume dial to avoid the shrill blasts in places. Certainly one for those interested in the grey area between improv and noise. (Richard Pinell, The Watchful Ear)
The name Syndromes, also known as Kostis Kiylmis, is a new one for me. He uses, sound wise, a contact microphone, loose 1/8" jack, mixing board, effects and room, as listed on the cover. At first I thought I should leave this with Jliat, since it all sounds pretty noise based to me, but there is something interesting about it. Its not the pure noise attack that is a common place for many of the noise makers, but there is something, at least that's what I think controlled about these improvisations. A static mass of hiss, with occasional crackles. I could try and say something about noise reaching for microsound, or vice versa, but that's simply not the case here. Its a firm work of noise (of work of firm noise?) and that's just fine enough. (Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly)
Kilymis doesn't make it easy. Two "suites", as it were, the first made up of unrelentingly irritating sound; it's sometimes as though a vacuum cleaner is being held a few inches from ones ears (bees are preferable). Electro-metallic clicks, harsh onrushes of static; all well and good except there's a shallowness at play, a lack of depth-of-field that I find off-putting. Again, perhaps that's the intent, but it left me cold. The second portion is subtler, the layers of static and the spaces between supplying some degree of atmosphere, making for an attractive, burnished wash of sound. So, half and half for me on this one. (Brian Olewnick, Just Outside)
Among these new releases comes what is hands-down Kilymis’ best work to date. Under the tag, “Syndromes,” Kilymis has recorded an expansive set of his own music with a killer title: Just Another Daily Bummer. The artist notes call the project “bedroom music for contact microphone, loose 1/8” jack, mixing board and effects”, yet the music itself offers no trace of irony or kitsch, only a focused progression that adheres more to the placement of sounds within sequences, rather than “vertical” regard to the sources themselves. Concern for patterns in music were clear in Kilymis’ earlier, fine A Diary From B to C, where “found” sounds are meshed with synthetic DX7-like rows, the latter fashioned from raw materials. On JADB, the raw materials are at the fore, constituting two independent themes, “Sweetest Hits of the Sweetest Sound,” and “Stop Trying To Explain”. Kilymis has been working for the better part of two years with wifi-related sources and EMI. Listening to his output of late, there’s a sort of autism at play in his approach – given the centralization of electro-magnetic noise in his music – and the techniques have matured. JADB thrives on the balance and attenuation of its sounds, from isolated blips to full static storms. While balanced, there is nothing “linear” about the disc, suggesting that traditional sequencing was secondary in this project. The effect is as if hearing something personally bestowed, yet cryptic and without any blatant divulging of essence.(Alan Jones, bagatellen)
