Køs - An Uncaught Bird

In a clouded past or hazy future, sounds expand without concerns or boundaries. We label this folk music if it is old or experimental this or that if it is new. Terms used to catch the music, categorize it, and fool ourselves with how we understand. A process not only used for music, but all living things. With some study, the components can be broken down and examined, knowledge of a particular sound or action is separated, dissected and most of the time understood. Like the air sac within birds, still argued explanations exists of why dinosaurs developed air sacs and birds have them. Expand out though, take an assembly of consciousness and the creativity within each. Combine these in their moments of accord. The sounds find rest in places we still dream about.

Three musicians comprise the sonic beauty of Køs. Maria Dybbroe playing saxophone, Valdemar Kragelund on electronics and Kristian Isholm Saarup behind the drums. This is their first full length album and it's more than spectacular from the sounds it holds to the art its delivered by. The most fascinating quality of their sounds are how raw and unprocessed they flow. Maybe this was considered when naming the composition An Uncaught Bird. From the opening track, "Earth's Green Carpet", Køs delivers a sonic flight soaring on on hidden currents. Songs build and float, dive and swoop up again. The patterns are instinctive, aural precision developed in the churn of time. Deep within, a well controlled energy is always heard. Like this could easily go into chaotic improvisation, but has been wisely left with only the window cracked open. An Uncaught Bird is beautiful, filled with effortless melodies holding perfectly blended imaginations. At times the timbre within this composition directs thoughts to an album from 1987 by Test Dept. titled A Good Night Out. An industrial band not really playing industrial like Køs who still escapes categories.

The artwork on for An Uncaught Bird is handmade on recycled album covers. The pictures below can not convey how well done their process is. All of the tears are precisely contoured around album information. The art is almost seamlessly applied to the used cover, like the whole thing was designed in a graphics program. This is a very limited edition of two hundred on the Odense, Denmark label Forlaget Kornmod. Copies are currently available.








Links
Forlaget Kornmod - bandcamp

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