Search - Eyvind Kang, Courtney Aguirre, Leila Clarke :: Eyvind Kang: The Story of Iceland

Solid effort from a very interesting musician

bimwa | Australia | 06/29/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Eyvind Kang has perfected the art of recording music that is utterly beautiful and yet completely sick and twisted at the same time. "The Story Of Iceland" is his third release on John Zorn's Tzadik label. "7 NADEs" was noisy and experimental, "Theatre Of Mineral NADEs" was simple and tuneful. "The Story Of Iceland" falls somewhere in between, being very listenable, and yet having it's themes stretched and developed to their full potential. There are no insane noisefests like on "7 NADEs", however. Kang's work is very unique, but some reference points I can offer: Sonic Youth, Phillip Glass, Michael Nyman and Secret Chiefs 3 (with whom he plays)."

Falls just short of Virginal Coordinates and Orchestra Dim

Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 05/14/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

". . . but awfully good just the same.



Eyvind Kang has a unique musical conception. When he's on, as he usually is, he can evoke never-before-heard sensibilities and soundscapes--heck, even when he's off, he still conjures musical bedlam entirely worth hearing.



He's generally on here. The only possible exception is "10:10 (The Beloved One)." Its aesthetic is weird enough, all right. For me it's just a question as to whether extremely stylized vocals (making Mike Patton, for example, sound like Mel Torme) mapped onto some bizarro psychedelic-rock/cabaret vibe really works. In the end, I guess I don't care: The whacky weirdness carries the day, although one must admit that the "music" purveyed on this cut stretches the term almost beyond recognition.



What he's doing on this disc, I think, is laying the groundwork for his masterpiece, Virginal Coordinates. "Circle of Fair Karma," with its plodding, dirgelike tempo, the brilliant trumpet of Lesli Dalaba, herself a New Music composer and performer of note, its elegiacism, its weight of glory, its floating strings over chthonic tuba, its Uillean pipes and Scottish fife-and-drum drumming, evokes that same eerie timebound timelessness of much of Virginal Coordinates.



"Sweetness of Candy" has that same sweet/sick vibe that much of his earlier astounding disc, The Sweetness of Sickness, has. I am especially taken by the faux-naive violin solo of Karla Ramnath. Strangely resonating with Indian double violin playing, her approach lends the piece a mesmerizing exotic sheen.



What to make of "The Hour of Fair Karma"? To me it sounds like Peter Garland meets the Claudia Quintet--that is to say, probably the most fantastic musical amalgamation I could imagine. Reeking of old mystery, nay, some kind of wholesome spiritual alchemy--what Secret Chiefs Three would be if they hadn't sold out to dark Kabala--encountered through the musical diaphragm of fake-folk sensibilities, these are sounds, far-fetched, to sooth the alienated Western psyche.



To me, Evying Kang ranks up there with my absolute favorite musical artists: Peter Garland, John Hollenbeck, Tucker Martine, Sylvie Courvoisier, Susie Ibarra, John Wolf Brennan, Peter Epstein, and Omar Sosa. Anything he does is worth hearing, and this is probably his third-best outing. Highly recommended."

An absolute masterpiece

A. Woods | Brooklyn | 09/05/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I have been holding off writing a review of this album for a long time. I am kind of a recovering Cartesian and I don't want to feel like I didn't do it justice, but upon listening to it again this morning I realized that no review could do it justice, so here goes:



This is an unbelievably good album. From the opening fog-horn-that-evolves-into-cello-tremulo to the yearning weirdness of "10:10", it is thoroughly beautiful and continually evocative of something at once alien and familiar. Kang seems to have drawn inspiration from Medieval alchemy (judging by the cover and his comments elsewhere) but I strongly feel that his Norse ancestors may have had a bigger hand in this than Giordano Bruno et al. The Story of Iceland is insistently trying to tell us a story, something important and epic and involving travels far from home, but in a language that we can't understand. Surprisingly, the listener feels a sense of comfort rather than loss at this failure to communicate.



Another thing - without disparaging any of Kang's other stuff, which all gets five stars from me, Iceland seems to hang together very well. Maybe I should say: it is very listenable. People who don't like weird music say it is interesting and ask to borrow it. The earlier Nades stuff seems more like brilliant madness, whereas Iceland is stately and patient.



I don't think this review does the album or the artist justice at all, but there's nothing I can do about that. This is a marvellous album by an underappreciated master. Buy it and cherish it."