Review: Klidas ‘No Harmony’
Klidas (a Czech word which translates to ‘Giant of Silence’), the amazing five-piece experimental post-rock band from Macerata, Marche, Italy, whose music includes elastic jazz elements, first came together in 2014 to slowly break that ‘silence’ via their calm, energetic, evocative and graceful sound. Although, in the end, it took them nine years to release their devilishly good debut album No Harmony, they left no stone unturned. Each band member introduced their own musical experiences into the recording, to express and bring vitality to the sound in their own way throughout the whole of the sessions.
Listening to Klidas it’s like entering in a world of spectacular cinematic scenes where the soundtrack brings out its imaginative aspect of a monumental journey. At the same time, it manages to immerse your mind into intense moments of entrancing musical clarity that only a few bands can unleash. It’s heaven and hell meeting and exploding with a melodic atmospheric sound, powered by the strong approach of battling instruments that speak with each other until they find that desired musical climate.
Klidas do not fit into the most common pattern of traditional post-rock. They come at it with a new approach, channelling their sound into territories that musically have no boundaries other than the search for larger spaces of creativity splendour.
‘As for the album’, explains their frontman guitarist/vocalist Emanuele Bury, ‘No Harmony has four instrumental tracks representing the four classical elements of creation: Shores (Water), Not To Dissect (Fire), Circular (Air) and The Trees Are In Misery (Earth). They are interspersed with two tracks called Shine and Arrival that bridge and focus on the awareness of living in a reality generated and dominated by primordial chaos’. These four elements of creations are musically explored, but in a more introspective experimental avant-garde music way, akin to the Third Ear Band’s 1970 self-titled second album, that also happens to be known as Elements.
Klidas intend to dissolve musical parameters through a succession of multifaceted sounds of immeasurable beauty and sensorial sensitivity that cross every aspect of its music genre. Inside No Harmony there are feelings of anger, stillness and frustration translated into throbbing heartbeats. It’s a The Grand Wazoo of modern times, and it strikes like a bolt of lightning in the open sky.
The Grand Wazoo of modern times…
The first track of the album, Shores, is so elaborate and intense that it explodes in your heart with its poignant sound of electric guitar and the lament of the saxophone, which pervades all the tracks without giving you a breather. However, that’s not all, because inside there is more which gives you a shiver down your spine. During Shine (one of the two tracks which includes lyrics), Emanuele sings in the background ‘Through my eyes, close to shine. Close to find real new life’, while the music releases insatiable chaotic and indomitable shattering noise.
With Not To Dissect they bring out that Canterbury jazz rock feel, reminiscent of Soft Machine battling with Fripp’s King Crimson. ‘…Like a sun cracks the hill’ spreads out the immortal bliss of Arrival which finishes with the calm spoken words by Manami Kunitomo. The song that closes this album of monumental beauty is the instrumental The Trees Are In Misery, with its complete master music mayhem. It’s poignant, combative like an emperor making plans in his war room.
The album is out via the Australian label Bird’s Robe. I asked Emanuele, why the need to go down under to get a record deal?
‘We looked for a label to create a team of people who really believe in the project and look for contacts abroad. After self-producing the album, we sent it to several targeted labels, regardless of nationality. Bird’s Robe was interested and offered us to re-mix and re-master the album and take care of the production’.
This happens when Italian labels don’t see the potential in a band, Shame eh!? So, as you start listening to Klidas‘ No Harmony, relax and lose yourself in this glowing journey and let it take hold of you without leaving any moment to think …where am I?
Label: Bird’s Robe Records
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram
Scribed by: Domenico ‘Mimmo’ Caccamo
