Kes Trio : Black, Brown, Green, Grey, White
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Kes Trio : Black, Brown, Green, Grey, White

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During the recent launch of Black, Brown, Green, Grey, White, there was a moment when Kes Trio seemed to have discovered a hitherto unknown bridge between the cool-as-fuck hipster aesthetic of inner-city Melbourn

Karl Scullin isn’t a musician who’s particularly interested in resting on his laurels, or flogging every last breath from a once vibrant artistic concept. Scullin’s last album, recorded under the moniker Kes Band, was an all-instrumental affair that saw Scullin explore and indulge his interest in classical sounds.

This time around the Kes concept has become a trio (Scullin, Julian Patterson and Lehmann Smith), and Scullin has discarded classical for a duality between heavy rock and lighter, ethereal moments. The title track of the new Kes Trio record, Black, Brown, Green, Grey, White rests casually on a Surrealists-style riff, augmented with a sequence of jarring noises that might have been plucked from a Hammer House Of Horror narrative.

From there Body Time is almost hippie-esque in its celebration of nature, while the lilting tones of Wise Eyes are so wondrous they could you transport you into a place of infinite natural beauty. And just when you’re least expecting it, The Alarm Clock arrests you from your slumber with a series of threatening chords and vocal shards that drive a knife through your frontal lobes.

Won Seventeen starts on the industrial side of Talking Heads’ Naive Melody and gradually heads out further into the ether, taking no prisoners in its marriage between the Lower East Side and upstate New York.

From there, respite is on offer courtesy of the wistful and almost rustic tones of Living Underground, a sort of indie-folk rock interpretation of a Kenneth Graham narrative. Thieves Beat is an elegant pop song with the punk shades of Television and the harmony-laden brilliance of Crosby, Stills and Nash, I Don’t Get It is – as you might suspect – a non sequitur moment of noise, sound and everything in between, while the concluding track, The Original Daddy, is John Phillips confronting his demons and finding a glorious pop melody in the midst of all the psychological trauma.

During the recent launch of Black, Brown, Green, Grey, White, there was a moment when Kes Trio seemed to have discovered a hitherto unknown bridge between the cool-as-fuck hipster aesthetic of inner-city Melbourne and the experimental, progressive sounds of the early 1970s. Hipster-prog: now there’s a concept.