LP Innentasche

Brilliant Fog: Kayo Dot's "Turbine, Hook, and Haul"

LP Innentasche

There is a weightlessness to the inimitable Kayo Dot‘s newest album Blasphemy. Yet another notch in the brilliant Toby Driver’s belt, Kayo Dot’s ninth album traverses the worlds of progressive rock in a sea of brilliant, brooding fog. This is grey music, the soundtrack for a grey, gloomy day or a walk through immeasurable stillness. Watch an exclusive video premiere of “Turbine, Hook, and Haul” below.

Though the band has experimented with jazz, metal, and pop (among many others) in the past, there is a new weight found within Blasphemy. Not weight as in heaviness or anything remotely metallic, but a weight in footing. Blasphemy‘s weight is in its footing — Kayo Dot’s atmospheric ballads display a new, confident positioning for this tenured hydra. Though the world has grown accustomed to Kayo Dot’s own chameleonic existence, shifting to a new sound with each album, Blasphemy is Kayo Dot at their most comfortable. It is effortless and hangs delicately in the sky, but carries the weight of Kayo Dot’s creativity with it.

From Toby Driver:

This video is a blatant nerd-out, an animation inspired by a few classic video games, particularly Final Fantasy 2 (SNES, 1988, a.k.a. Final Fantasy 4). In the recent past when I’ve been asked to reflect on Kayo Dot’s oeuvre, I’ve found a very apt analogy in Final Fantasy overworld maps, with each of our records being able to be thought of as different lands (Coffins on Io as the moon, Hubardo as the town of Ornac, Coyote as the underworld, etc). Because of Blasphemy’s lyrical content and themes, and that I’ve always been interested in playing with animation, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for such a video. And I was deliberately avoiding writing much music this year while I waited for the album to drop, so I had some time to try my hand at making some visual art. Mainly I did this to tickle myself. In this part of the story, our characters have finally reached their X-marked spot and haul their terrible treasure up from the depths of the sea.

KAYO DOT Rainbow
Photo credit: Casey Mathewson

Blasphemy releases September 6th via Prophecy Productions.