Kark - 'The Hermit' (HP Cycle)

Time has forgotten Kark already and this, like so many HP Cycle releases, exists in the utterly weird vacuum of mid-00s experimental music which sort of congealed around a 'scene' but also sorta didn't. File alongside the Maniacs Dream record or the Boots/CC/Snake & Remus box - what a great fucking label, and I wish it was still operating. Kark were from Louisville and may have been 100% the same lineup as Sapat, a band which has been kicking around forever and who released two great LPs that also are never talked about. Of course, Sapat was a shifting lineup of just about every weirdo freak who ever picked up a sound-making device within the greater Louisville region, so Kark being 100% overlap doesn't really mean anything. More likely, Kark are just the more jazz-orientated members of Sapat emphasising the horns and the swing or whatever characteristics make one file a record in the 'jazz' section instead of 'pop/rock'. As faithful readers realise by now, I make no such distinctions by genre and only trust the infallible alphabetical order as my organising principle, but I would still call Kark 'jazz' or at least 'jazzy'. The first side opens with a slow, creeping modal workout that is heavily middle-eastern in tone and builds into an explosive cacophony. For a few minutes in the centre of the side every goes at it with MAXIMUM ENERGY which means skronk, squeals, screaming and blast beats underneath it all. When this movement passes, it starts to get really interesting and wobbly; you can hear the big, cavernous space they are all jamming in and the ensemble is large, I'd guess somewhere between six and fifteen people though it's hard to tell for sure. This circling around a pulse eventually takes form as a thick, stomping dirge that's rhythmically so primitive it's brilliant, and around this you hear horns and cymbals and bowed bass finding a centre again. It's a beautiful side of music created by a bunch of outsiders to the jazz context, as far as I know, since the musicians are uncredited (the only liner notes being a cryptic strip of doodle-on paper). By the end it slows down to an ambient whisper, a fadeout drone, which segues nicely into the flip, an unbanded side-long piece that starts from a spare, spooky room jam. This continues the vaguely middle-eastern vibe heard on side 1, but for a longer stretch, with the musicians giving each other lots of space to probe and resonate. It's a beautiful slice of Kentucky exotica, and when it again swells into a huge epic blowout, it's actually a bit disappointing, though surely cathartic for the musicians – but the space is what's so beautiful and unique. This is a live recording, though a pretty clear one, where the echo of the room is very much a part of the music and somehow things don't get too lost once the drums start to rumble. A surprising breakdown into a double-bass driven riff, counterpointed by electric piano or some other form of keyboards, recalls the Art Ensemble/Fontella Bass's 'Theme de Yo-Yo' for a second or two, and an enthusiastic audience is audible during a momentary lull. The Hermit breathes with life and is really fun, fierce in places but neither overly groove-based nor head-scratchingly avant. It seems to assimilate a lot of influences into a group approach that shares a view about music, and it's obscure status relegates this surely to the 'hidden gem' category, after only a decade.