Keplar Keplar – 3rd March 2023
Christopher Nosnibor
However much you think you know about music, there is always more to learn. And so it transpired that Holo was first released in 1998 and is ‘one of those rare records that managed to carve out a niche of its own while also building bridges to variety of genres like Chicago-style post-rock, the ambient mysticism of projects like Rapoon or the music made at the intersection of shoegaze, and electronic music in the late 1990s.’
Where have I been? Living in a cultural vacuum? Hardly. And yet this is my first encounter with KILN. And I’ve not heard of Rapoon and have no knowledge of Chicago-style post-rock either. Chicago house, I’m aware of, but… well, I daresay I’m not alone, and so this reissue off Holo may well prove to provide an introduction, and an entry point to the trio’s supposedly niche-carving brand of ambience.
It’s an album that’s rich in detail and texture, from clanking, clattering tin can percussion and big sweeps of amorphous sonic clouds that wash and crash in waves.
It’s hard to decipher precisely what’s what – is that a didgeridoo or just a digital drone? It’s impossible to unravel the layers and determine the individual sources as glugs and gurgles slide in between soft dulcimer-like notes and easy beats that bubble between all kinds of textures and tones which drift and slide and groan and drone in and out of the ever-shifting fabric of this fascinating album. Guitars and extraneous sounds flit and flicker in and out while instant drums nag and boom. At times it’s new age, at times it’s more tribal, and Holo pushes ambience in numerous directions.
There are segments – interludes, breaks, fragments – where this is a catalogue of challenging source materials melted together. At others, it’s altogether less challenging and simply washes of you in a soft breeze.
For an album that’s so chilled, there is much happening on Holo¸ and as much as it is an album to chill to, first and foremost it’s an album to explore.
AA
Aural Aggravation 