Two current solo debuts from guitarist Michael Kaiser run counter to the modern strategy of bombarding the music scene with albums, product, content material and social media posts. The twin launch of Realms and Evening Realms are akin to hanging a primal urgrund-note on a squealing electrical guitar, letting it resonate by means of life/demise for 3 many years, and returning for the secondary strum.
Neutrality is the arguably aim with any important writing. Eradicating the “I” from any story lets the reader tackle all supporting roles and direct their very own narrative. However for the sake of full disclosure I absolutely have some sort of pores and skin within the sport with Kaiser; or a minimum of private and creative historical past.
Circa 1989 whereas nonetheless in our late teenagers/early twenties, Kaiser, Rob Armstrong and myself routinely turned my hapless mother and father’ storage in Jacksonville Seashore into smoke set to 1 key: invariably a very loud “E” chord cast by means of guitar, bass, drums and sheets of steel. Whereas SUNN O))) now notoriously tune their guitars right down to C# from most sonic wooziness, Kaiser was the primary musician I met who would normally tune his trusty Guild or Aria Professional II guitars right down to a gullet-loosening low “A”— deep under the usual “E tuning.” He was additionally the primary guitarist I knew who had his tube amps modified — on this case by native gear wizard Invoice Ferris so the teenaged Kaiser may obtain barely-controllable Blue Cheer-level distortion.
In 1992, Kaiser dropped out of school the place he was learning pictures and joined Royal Trux as second guitarist. After having Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema crash at his home following an Orlando gig, Kaiser actually “received within the van.” From 1992-1994, he toured and recorded with Royal Trux, together with exhibits with Mudhoney, the Laughing Hyenas and the ’93 Lollapalooza. His recorded output with the band features a BBC John Peel session and maybe the band’s most-generally lauded launch: 1993’s Cats and Canines.
Kaiser’s collaboration and affiliation with Hagerty and Herrema additionally turned a de facto portal for different locals to be employed on as Trux side-players: from 1994-2000, Jacksonville Seashore musicians together with Robert Armstrong, Chris Pyle, Ken Nasta, Timothy McClain and myself intermittently toured or recorded with Royal Trux.
Contemplating that Kaiser’s tenure with Trux was once they had been nonetheless a relative “secret handshake” albeit-adored band, his transfer to go “off radar” was one in every of shifting from obscurity to an indifference to rock music altogether. In 1999, Kaiser performed bass with locals Jon Todd on a cut up vinyl 10” launch with Fin Fang Foom (Stripmine Recordings). The classes had been engineered and blended by Martin Bisi, the NYC-based producer who had labored with Sonic Youth, Herbie Hancock, John Zorn and Swans, amongst others. Then Kaiser stepped away from the indie scene fully. He was pulled into the mother-tongue of drone music, devoting years to learning Indian music, together with intensive personal classes on the vina (Carnatic) and self-study of sitar (Hindustani Classical).
All of that historical past is legitimate as it’s the momentum and sure volition within the arrival of the Realms albums.
Realms is actually one sustained piece, created with electrical guitar and granular synthesizer. In lieu of the longer recording charges of a standard sampler, a granular synthesizer captures micro-samples or “grains”—that are usually five-to-200 milliseconds lengthy, which may then be utilized to synthesize new sounds. Iannis Xenakis created granular synthesis along with his 1959 piece Analogique A-B, a frantic call-and-response between analog tone mills, tape splicing, and orchestra. The second observe from Realms is entitled “The Celestial” and is a Xenakis at .25-playback pace: a 10-minute sonic-thread of overtones and guitar glissandos ricocheting off ghost planets.
The counterpoint to Realms each sonically and aesthetically, Evening Realms is the sludge-rich chimera to its sibling album. Layered over dense guitar samples, the album highlights Kaiser fully improvising with an alternate tuning he was wholly unfamiliar with: (D-A-D-F-A-E). Whether or not by means of default or design the guitar is open-tuned to the Dorian Mode – the identical set of tones that gave us Miles Davis’s “So What” and the Allman Brothers Band “In Reminiscence of Elizabeth Reed.” However you gained’t discover comparable motion within the glacial lurch of Evening Realms. Album nearer “Oblivion” is a seven-minute rumination that resembles a single huge chord collapsing on itself, slowly, the gleam of “The Celestial” now tempered right into a grey cascade of suggestions.
On precept, Kaiser is a rightful product of his era’s underground influences: the rabid guitar throttling of mid-80’s Sonic Youth and Pussy Galore that pointed ardent seekers again to NYC No Wave guitar magi like Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham, then additional nonetheless to the Sixties work of La Monte Younger and Marian Zazeela. But, Kaiser was additionally skull-deep within the essential underground steel and grindcore scenes of the late ‘80s. The guitar lava on Evening Realms arguably owes as a lot to Carcass and Godflesh because it does Elliot Sharp.
Whether or not or not it’s drone, minimalism, ambient and even Indian music, the static types that Kaiser offers in can both be heard as a beckoning invitation or have the impact of being foot-braked by its inherent sameness. Realms and Evening Realms are hardly get together albums; until you need to decelerate the corporate mixer to 16 BPM. However just like the aforementioned genres, Kaiser’s albums aren’t out to transform anybody. You adhere to the sound or just don’t.
Will we wait one other 25 years for Kaiser to spring one other album on us? Hopefully not. Whereas we wait, extra adventurous listeners with affected person ears would do nicely to dip into the twin Realms albums. They’re long-overdue music from an under-acknowledged and semi-obscure artist from no matter music underground that calls Northeast Florida house.
