KAI KLN & SOULHAT: Extinct Regional Heroes

Kai Kln - Seven - 5/8/93, UC Davis
Kai Kln - For What & What For - 10/30/98, The Boardwalk
Kai Kln - Blur - 10/30/98, The Boardwalk

Soulhat - Bonecrusher - 7/30/94, Floodzone
Soulhat - Wiggin' (with quote to Jeff Beck's "You Know What I Mean") - 7/30/94 Floodzone

My 23-year old brother-in-law told me about archive.org around two weeks ago. "Thousands of free live shows," he said. He's there mostly for the Disco Biscuits and related bands but it definitely sounded intriguing. As expected, 90% had to be jam bands of various sorts, with small allowances for random bands with open recording policies, such as the post-rock Red Sparrowes. I didn't recognize most of the bands, but as I was flying through the index, I was stunned to run into a band name that I had hubristically assumed only I (and the 90s residents of the Sacramento area) was familiar with: Kai Kln.

A record store owner in Brooklyn, who was formerly from Cali, hooked me up after we'd been talking a while and I told him how into progressive hard rock I am. I since found their other two albums in blow-out bins for around $1 each ("Please, take these off of my hands. Hell, I'll pay you," the stores seem to say). You got a deal. Especially cause these guy ripped in ways that no one else did. They updated the Zeppelin school by getting a little funky and polishing up the rhythm section a bit while loosening up the songs and guitars to give the impression of a band who was simultanously hard rockin' and laid-back (though this comes through more in their studio material, especially the essential Matter Of Things). The occasional banjo jams did nothing to dispell this impression. This was a band who clearly liked not only the Dead and Zeppelin, but also the mutated guitar mastery of the Meat Puppets and loosely funky post-hard-core of the Minutemen. This was a sound that could have really resonated with the jam band kids who were also into heavier stuff like Zep and Sabbath, as well as with the nascent stoner rock kids who were just starting to get into Kyuss and Monster Magnet. Somehow, despite seeming to have appeal to a wide swathe of people, Kai Kln ended up resonating with pretty much no one outside of the Sacramento area. A friend of mine from Sacramento played on a few of the same gigs as Kai Kln and said they would often draw over a thousand people, unheard of for an unsigned band. If a tree falls in the forest...

Similar story with Soulhat. Super-talented band from Austin that would generate some smoking shows and draw some decent crowds in the early-mid 90s. Their mix was predominantly hard, blues-based Southern rock with a nifty funk cut. Yes, they would get a little folky here, a little country there, a little surreal some place else. But tight, funky, classic, jamming hard rock with some ripping lead guitar was what this band was about. Two problems: first, it wasn't clear where on radio to put them (too off-center, funky, and jamming for post-grunge "rock" formats, too hard and traditionally "rock" for alternative radio). Second, they were really a live band. The studio efforts never did them justice. They still do the occasional gig in Austin.

Thank heaven for regional vitality. That's what allowed bands like Kai Kln and Soulhat to go for as long as they did, despite being unsigned or ignored by their label. Bands that get get hot in one area tend to have word-of-mouth spread farther and wider these days, often faster than the band's heat warrants. But that's still a generally good thing. Hopefully, current Kai Klns won't fall through the cracks as easily as they did in the 90s. Then again, as the ability to be heard nationwide, instantly, increases does that demand the increasing formation of a "national" sound? If so, what determines that sound? Could it be the fashions of the biggest media centers, such as New York and San Francisco? To an extent. There will always be fashion, but we've already been seeing dizzying niche-ification, too. Only the niches are not really arranged by geography as they are by interest groups. This might strip some of the unique flavor that can ferment in a certain place at a certain time with the right people and the right fans (early 80s NYC, late 80s Seattle/Minneapolis, etc). This might incent musicians to write for broader, blander audiences. Then again, musicians don't get paid by selling records nationwide; they still gotta play live. And that means playing where their friends and family are. That means home. That means gigs like the gigs on archive.org. That means a great resource for the rest of us.

DANAVA FINALLY LAUNCHES THEIR DEBUT

Danava - Danava (Kemado)

Danava is still, as it was at the time of NY Press' ridiculous “Return Of The Real Rock” piece, one of the most interesting bands in underground hard rock, though the Press didn't bother to mention them. Judging from last night’s show at Mercury Lounge, Danava's only gotten sharper since then. The sound is clearly in place: a dense, semi-progressive, semi-spacey hard rock with myriad arpeggiated riffs, a frenetic rhythm section, high, dark-gnome vocals, and synth swirls and swooshes for texture. HAWKWIND plays a big role in the way the bass and guitar layer on top of each other, the way the synths swirl, and the overall momentum of most of the band's pieces. But while Hawkwind would often be content to riff on one or two notes, Danava likes to race up and down their scales, creating a proggy effect that doesn’t really resemble anyone from the 70s (maybe a downer IRON MAIDEN gets closer, if we're allowed to move into the 80s). The vocals are high and pinched, recalling BANG recalling OZZY, but sometimes with a deformed glam and sometimes with a robotic hobbit vibe that, again, makes it not quite like anyone. The guitar takes on all sorts of sounds, from a distorted fuzz, to a soaring chorus, chugging to wailing.

Funny thing is, at Mercury, all of this stuff kind of went out the window. Or, under the wheels might be a more apt analogy. That is, under the wheels of the steaming freight train of their rhythm section. The bass was all over the place, essentially bridging the hyper boogie jamming TEN YEARS AFTER's Leo Lyons to the prog-punk-metal innovations of METALLICA’s Cliff Burton. This bass player may very well be the engine of the Danava machine (Kemado should just get this guy a Rickenbacker). Meanwhile, the drummer’s two hands did not stop for the entire set, as if beats were better understood as a nonstop raging river of fills. Awesome energy and hyper-percussive (“thumpy,” as an old friend used to say), though I could have personally used a little Mitch Mitchell and John Bonham heavy-funky beat mastery every now and then to go with his Keith Moon abandon. Regardless, this rhythm section’s as good as you’re going to see in this kind of rock, even considering that the guitar, vocals, and synths were pretty much obliterated unless they were in their highest registers. The result was crisp and punchy, if lacking a little in dynamics, vocals, and guitar.

The band’s just-released, self-titled disc on Kemado minimizes some of these issues, but brings up others. The drum-thumping is lowered in the mix, though far from buried, while the lead guitar and vocals are pushed up, providing some high end to counter the busily churning, but relatively difficult to discern bass. The synths blow into and around the pieces like some intergalactic winds accompanied by shooting stars and comets.

The album launches with “By the Mark,” probably the most well-circulated track by the band, and deservedly so. Based around a mournful opening guitar line, pitting a high guitar against a low bass in tasty harmony, the track soon launches into its Hawkwind hard space rock, with riff sequence after riff sequence. It pretty much encapsulates the band’s sound. The next track “Eyes In Disguise” starts by giving us a breather with a couple of minutes of an organically repeating, electronic, minimalist/krautrock figure that gets jarred to attention by some hard, muted cymbal hits that recall the beginning of “Eye of the Tiger” before blasting into a riff that takes up most of the next six minutes. "Quiet Babies In A Manger" is the shortest and one of the most satisfying tracks on the album. The opening features a short movement of baroque counterpoint (recalling, but not quite equalling, the FUCKING CHAMPS' take on Bach's "Air in G". Honestly, I'd love to hear Danava put their expert guitar and bass skills to even more counter-point and polyphony in their writing, if applied sagely, of course). This passage gracefully cedes the stage to a basic cock rock riff which, in turn, opens up into a rare opening of space as the guitar plays some patient, graceful, sustained notes, taking its time, building tension and energy, before launching into a hyper-busy prog-arpeggio section, complete with harmonized flashes that finally comes to a tight, definitive conclusion. The album finishes up with a witches tale of sorts called “Maudie Snook,” whose main riff is more than reminiscent of THIN LIZZY’s “Black Rose.” But while the Lizzy track is triumphant and anthemic, this Danava riff seems more gnarled and malevolent…more witchlike. With a piano coda, no less.

My major complaint with the recording is that it feels under-recorded. I understand that budgets are always a concern, but a couple of choices are curious. A major choice was to put fuzz on almost every instrument. Rather than making things sound richer, warmer, and Vertigo-vintage, the fuzzy tone makes certain things (such as the vocals) sound thin, choked, and even shrill. Also, a decision seems to have been made to balance all of the instruments to each other. But this flattening in recording levels has tended to make the melodic lines muddy-together, making it difficult to separate the guitar and bass (and keyboards?, if they're playing the riffs. I can't really tell). Considering the musicians' skills (especially the bassist's), it's a shame to lose them to the mix (or is he just under-playing?). The guitar player's got chops, too. Why muffle him? More space and separation, I think, would have allowed each highly active member to stand in clearer relief without necessarily upsetting the intended band-based balance and greater-than-the-sum-of-their-parts power.

It's one thing to get all fuzzed-out with a band that can't play very well, in order to minimize their technical shortcomings and emphasize their energy, or whatever. But it's another thing to fuzz-out on a band who is not only technically accomplished but also relatively adventurous with its compositions. Danava plays astral sci-fi existential fantasy hard rock. The spaceship should be constructed of some outer-nebula, extra-terrestrial alloy. And it is, but the production makes that alloy feel a bit frayed and rusty, rather than highlighting its potential for space and time travel.

Danava is a musically ambitious band. "Retro" only half-fits since the band's aims are clearly beyond mere idolization. Nor can they be said to be derivative since any similarity they might have to any earlier band is countered by five dissimilarities. "Hipster" doesn't really apply since their pieces are vigorous enough and built from a kind of commitment to their form that would preclude most casual fans or fans of "progressive hard rock for people who don't like progressive hard rock." On the downside, their riffs can step on each other's toes, their arrangements can get muddy and their pieces (which average nine minutes) could benefit from wider and deeper dynamics. On the plus side, they have all the chops they need, a deep well of imagination, independence of vision, and idiosyncrasy of expression. On top of that, they know the history of hard rock and what made the best the best. That means, while they are very good now, even one of the best in the US hard rock underground, it seems very likely that they're going to get even better.