Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat - An Interlude To The Outermost ((K-RAA-K)³, 2007)

1 Prelude ("The World Is In Fear Again And It Has All Been Manufactured") (2:31)
2 The Firesky (5:14)
3 A Scatterbrain Sings Of Christians And The Ghoul Bares Teeth (6:29)
4 The Cranes Are Scared Of Sunwords (3:19)
5 Salt (5:44)
6 You Will Reap A Whirlwind (9:07)
7 Beyond The Tanarian Hills (9:16)
8 Cornflowers For Our Brothers (5:41)
9 All Movements Are Targets In The Minds Of Tigers (3:52)

Folk noire, musique intense, chants désillusionnés, pas grand chose à voir avec la joie de vivre comme le dit le label dans sa présentation....

Kiss the Anus of a Black Cat is the solo project of the young Belgian musician and instrument-builder Stef Heeren. Heeren used to be in a punk band but choose to follow his own direction a few years ago. Kiss The Anus of a Black Cat makes dark folk songs with ethnic instruments as the tampura or the sruthibox.

The young Belgian ruler of apocalyptic folk, Stef Heeren, after his much aclaimed debut album of last year, returns with an amazing follow up. “An Interlude For The Outermost” combines the dark mantra-ish folk of his first record with sharpened folkrock, intense melodies and heart-ripped spleen. His punkroots are still clearly present in his powerful voice, the themes are still slightly pagan. The difference with “If The Sky Falls, We Shall Catch Larks” is the fact that on the new album we much more hear the product of a band, with profound arrangements and detailed production. “An Interlude For The Outermost” has become the masterpiece we all expected from Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat.
The recordings of “An Interlude For The Outmost” already started in August 2006, when Heeren, together with guitar player De Maré and drummer David Stubbe (ex-Thee Plague Of Gentlemen) took a room in art center Vooruit (Ghent) to record the basics of the new album. After that, Heeren started to reshape the songs by inviting different musicians to play different parts and by getting everything together on the computer. Thematically not much has changed. He still screams his soul into the mic. and carries all the shit of the world on his shoulders for the time the album lasts. Even though some melodies might prove the contrary, the feel of this album hasn’t much to do with the joy of life. This young musician’s main worries are both the heritage of 09/11, the banality of the individual and society. This desillusion he tries to put into his lyrics and music. And how... With the rock line-up he has clearly found his thing, and presents us the new album that is definitely one of the highlights of the contemporary darkfolk movement.
(K-RAA-K)³

buy

try

Kiss The Anus of a Black Cat - If the Sky Falls We Shall Catch Larks ((K-RAA-K)³, 2005)

1		Sevenfold (5:31)
2		Nihil, As In Nihilism (8:14)
3		Sighing, Seething, Soothing (19:17)
4		Almost, Silver (5:58)

This project has a strange, unattractive and “loaded” name I must say, which derived from the idea that in the Dark Ages witches were supposed to confess they had kissed the anus of the black cat, -say the devil- when they were accused and were condemned of being witches with at least some standard of confession. I assume the idea behind the choice of name it is one of a disappointed vision on irrational logical tendencies in society. “Nihil, as in Nihilism” for instance is some sort of protest song, inspired by the anger he felt after seeing the kind of mediacircus money-collecting after the Tsunami disaster. “Almost, Silver” is a more personal song, about unrequited love. The music itself is built up by two parallel shadowy existences : the disappointing real evolutions on one hand, with songs sung by a dark voice, comparable to David Tibet’s Current 93 band, and a utopian mood / sphere with a desire for beauty, stylistically expressed by a background of a more acid folk kind of improvisation which includes some drones and fingerpicking. The acid folk element is partly inspired in idea by shaman or religious music, and this part is flavoured with a kind of Psychic TV inspiration. The guitar picking confirms the song structure and general evolutions. The song and word expressions aren’t so forward or focused as with Current 93, and for me are dissolved by the general mood- trance evolution.

For “Sevenfold”, my favourite track of the album, people I think will be reminded of Current 93 mostly, and it sounds also like some specific tracks from them. This track is performed as a ritualistic complaint, with some nice semi-eastern pickings near the end. The voice here has additional layers of howling and murmuring.

Nihil as in Nihilism, my second favourite, with more nice fingerpicking, is mixed nicely with a tampura drone effect, some keyboard, a well understood effect which also benefits the colours and evolution in singing / structure of the song. “Sighing, seething, soothing” is for most of the long track, a nice spherical minimal ambient-acoustic track, with repetitive minimal gothic electric piano, led by second member Bart Reekmans mixed with moody drones, with chimes, gongs, bells and keyboards effects, causing a slower evolving wave throughout the track, before the song reveals itself, with additional distorted guitar drones, flute-like keyboards, hurdy-gurdy-like drones and background vocals. Last track, Almost, Silver is another fingerpicking song with additional strummed guitar, sparse percussion and keyboards and accordion (?).

psychedelicfolk

buy

try