Welcome to the first review in the Project A2 series of reviews written based on releases I receive from artists and labels in the field of Noise and other related extreme experimental and underground music which also includes lighter styles of underground sounds too. In this review I’m excited to share with you the recently new released new album by Ukrainian group Kadaitcha titled Tar. The version I’m reviewing is the digital version of this album which is available from Kadaitcha’s own Bandcamp page, the files provided in the download were 24-bit/48kHz high resolution FLAC files, which is most likely also one of the options you can choose on Bandcamp if you purchase Tar there. Now, for people who have read my review of Flaming Pines’ excellent Kaleidoscope compilation, the name Kadaitcha is definitely not new but whilst there was some crunchy heaviness on that compilation too, this full album definitely gives the full picture of Kadaitcha’s dark, murky but also surprisingly varied sound. The group consisting of Andrei Kojoohar and Yuri Samson blends a lot of at times quirky but also often quite harsh synth experimentation, noisy guitars which at times form riffs but oftentimes fall into a stream of hazy noise and vocals that appear on multiple tracks on Tar, at times ritual, other times manic and wild. Acoustic drums feature too, albeit it often almost masked by the masses of sound Kadaitcha created but drum machine is used too with a Krautrock like sound to it. Archaic music is one of the influences of Kadaitcha’s sound and whilst the group has a feel for spaced out craziness the dark, low and mid frequency focussed sound palette definitely emits a lot of this kind of ancient, primitive intriguing type of trance atmospheres which appear to be directly connected to imagery of dusty caves, black earth and indeed the Tar from the album title. Running for a full hour, the album is also one of the longest releases the group has recorded so far so full immersion is encouraged. Indeed, let’s immerse ourselves in these 7 tracks.
First track Idle Hands starts of with a sparse melody played on guitar in mellow strummed chords and separate tones backed my mechanical whirring, squealing and hissy steam like high pitched noises, in the background resonant sampled and widely auto panned ambience pads add a mysterious ghostly ambience to the whole. The guitar’s tone’s also gradually become modulated through reverse. This section crossfades into a stronger more fierce stream of sound which still features some squelchy mechanical elements but now the guitar plays strong at times dissonant power chords, strange manipulated samples of vocal music and AM radio blending through the tense ambience like manic ghosts. This section then moves through a short period of metallic liquid like synth noises into the heaviest part of the track, the finale, which starts of with a thunderous rumbling bassy electronic drum rhythm with a crunchy, bitcrushed Industrial Techno like sound. A clean rhythmic guitar melody enters which quickly morphs into a distorted droney kind of Noise which is backed by further feedback laden sweeps of Noise, emphasised resonant howls from the bit crushed percussion and the strange manipulated vocal music samples return, the piece eventually ends with a single rhythmic guitar drone taking much of the foreground within the piece. It’s great how Kadaitcha builds most of the tracks on Tar as composition with multiple parts which progress throughout and blend melodic Rock elements with a lot of imaginative Noise, synth effects and sound manipulations which give the music this unique Post / Drone Rock kind of feel in how Noise is blended with traditional composition techniques whilst still retaining the energy, variation and sonic qualities that the Noise, Power Electronics and Death Industrial styles have within at times more chaotic structural frameworks. It’s good that Kadaitcha also doesn’t spoil the heavier extremes still to follow on the album, on this track. 2219 F then brings us a piece which takes the noisy side of guitar Drone as its main focus with most of the track being taken up by a swirling see of fuzzy distorted dramatic guitar drone, backed by galloping rimshot heavy acoustic drums which don’t quite drown in the drones but rather float quite easily. Before this fiery action erupts however, the piece starts with the mysterious sounds of strange filtered glimmering synth tones, bug like clicking sounds and various high pitched synth effects culminating in 8-bit styled digging through the crushed bits that eventually transitions to the sea of guitar drone. The waves of guitar drone are interrupted in one moment in which the eerie atmosphere of the start of the piece returns until the guitar hits again, once again enveloping us into the melodic, harmonically rich Noise. In this second wave of Noise fragile brittle high pitched fuzzy synth enter, adding some melodic variations to the drone. I like how Kadaitcha have found a curious way to create an ambience like a strange tribal fire ritual within this piece through the juxtaposition of the guitar Noise that also feels like instrumental Drone Metal in a way and the Earth like organic sonic elements and high pitched piercing tones give it that rough muddy, dirt filled edge of primal activities out in the open merciless nature. Afterwards on Ran, Kadaitcha turn up the Noise factor itself quite a bit more with a piece that features heavy a Rhythmic Noise groove made up of a heavily distorted kick and various distorted hits and heavily spring reverb manipulated metallic percussive elements. The melodic part of the piece is driven by a surprisingly clean sounding guitar riff, but as I mentioned, the blasting metallic screechy mayhem is where I feel most of the fun in this track is. The Noise rhythms and additional screeches shift in tempo in relation to the guitar riff which causes interesting polyrhythms within the piece and the manipulations of rhythmic and straight screeches make for richly varying energetic shapes of crunch and metallic rumble. Variations on the main guitar melody enter in the second half too however, in which the rhythmic Noise also follows the strumming with marching steel footsteps pounding in wide stereo reverb making for a slow but sure climax towards a solid stream of stuttering hollow malfunctioning alien machinery sounds, to put it into more “poetic” words. Then on Saima Kadaitcha move between interesting juxtapositions of elements, starting with a combination of squelchy synth effects, metallic reverberated vocals as well as cleaner Ritual like chanting featuring the word Saima from the title amongst other words. An again metallic sounding distorted drum machine rhythm which has some extremely panned stereo reverb creating that metallic sound gives the music a steady easy-going pace, as well as a pulse with the accent being the bassy kick drum, with tom and snare percussion adding some extra texture to the sound of the piece which especially in the final part of the track move into a much more distorted direction. A heavily rhythmic droning wall of resonant dissonant guitar strumming is the main focus of the piece tonally, taking up a considerable amount of its total length, with strangely turning additional guitar chords creating this Jazz like kind of odd juxtaposition between the two guitar parts. The guitar ambience is hypnotic and intensely gripping but also still keeps you within the realm of a kind of cult or mysterious religious ritual. The aforementioned last part of the track is where things get quite crazy, transitioning through a quirky little section of metallic guitar improvisation into an ever increasing wall of resonant distorted rhythmic mush formed by the drum machine, with the ritual vocals from earlier returning into more abstracted wordings (these don’t featuring during most of the droning guitar part of Saima in fact. The hovering wall of distorted mush which also wildly vibrates between the two stereo channels eventually erupts into screeching mono feedback which subtly fades out ending the piece in quite an explosive piercing finale. It’s great how Saima features both these hypnotic ritual elements and metallic Industrial experimentation in such a smooth composition with the tonal and textural aspects of the piece making for an equally entrancing as well as exploratory listen into the resonances and “breaking” aspects of the increasing distortion of the rhythmic pulse. Afterwards on Eclipse Kadaitcha envelop us in a monolithic wall of squelchy heavily distorted Noise. Featuring mouth harp like heavily distorted synth squelches, twisting stereo synth effects, dark auto-panned vocals and distant mysterious samples of vocal music, the music again moves into Ritual territory but with that now familiar raw Kadaitcha edge of intense mayhem. The vocals themselves are mostly death-themed and have this growled quality to them, but it’s the combination of the vocals with the excellently layered mixture of distorted synth effects and cleaner synth and sound manipulations that circle around your head as the piece progresses. The second half of Eclipse brings in more melodic elements in the form of a bass and electric guitar melody as well as a fiery mixture of acoustic and electronic drums. I’d say the qualities in Eclipse are definitely in the mysterious ambience that is created in the first half of the piece by the mixture of the music samples and Noise elements as well as the way the piece moves towards a great rocking climactic outburst in the second half. The guitar riff in the second half is nicely dramatic and the synth sounds and sound manipulations go particularly mental in this part of Eclipse. It’s definitely a piece that is more of a straight up Noise (Rock) jam but very enjoyable and relentless in that sense, just loosen up and go with the rawness of this one. Afterwards follows what is definitely one of my favourite tracks on Tar, which is Serpent Hill. Perfectly fitting its title the piece does indeed featuring these very tasty squelchy warped distorted synth sounds, making up what does indeed sound like this strange mountain of organic muck, with the filtered liquid like synth effects adding a lot of great organic details to the sound image in general. It definitely does sound very physical and alien in nature. Glitchy synth effects add some great stereo details to the sound too, very rough and nicely hissy. Furthermore we can hear some lovely growling deep and resonant serpent-themed vocals which quite kick into the mix like a hefty layer, the delay applied to them also helps to create extra space in the piece. A piercing distorted feedback loop overtime moves us towards the climax of the piece which features some intensely bassy, banging Industrial Techno drums alongside some great stereo crackled rhythmic additional layer of distortion and some very intense and even more resonant (seemingly modulated) wordless growled vocals. I’d say the many strengths of this piece especially got to do with how focussed the sound design of the distorted sounds is combined with the exciting progression of the piece which gives me both a feeling of very crisp murky sonic imagery but also plenty of raw Noise intensity which works great without losing definition of the separate layers within the piece. Being one of the most texture focussed pieces on Tar it still has a lot of brooding curious life within it that is very immersive, dirty but enjoyable. Final piece Yatagarasu then combines pretty much all elements Kadaitcha used on Tar up until this piece into an extended wild Noise jam. Based around a grungy and nicely clicky distorted drum machine groove the piece is quite like an in the moment improvisation of various layers of sound constantly moving, changing and intensifying. We have quite a lot of synth effects which are often very squelchy, rubbery in texture and mostly quite high pitched though with some great low-end thumps in them too at times. There are some wild screechy vocals in here too, sounding quite inhuman but also quite humorous in a very weird way. There is some nice jazzy guitar freak out in the piece too, which is amusingly clean sounding too. Towards the beginning of the piece there are also the sounds of what I’m guessing are circular saws, which are definitely quite fitting in the general chaos of the piece. But besides these elements the main drum groove itself also goes through great tasty distorted feedback laden manipulations which also accentuate the noise used within the drums themselves for some Rhythmic Noise flavouring and some funky cowbell does get added to the mix at some point even. A deep bassy drone flows along in the background of the piece too. Yatagarasu eventually reaches is disintegrating finale with much fire and sonic mayhem, I won’t spoil that however as it’s best to check it out yourself. With Yatagarasu we’ve reached the end of Tar by Kadaitcha. Tar is a quite varied album of dark, raw and energetic experimental Electro-Acoustic music which has a great general flow to it and an excellent balance of more conceptually focussed Ritual like pieces and more chaotic Noise jams. Kadaitcha’s consistency in their sound, which mixes harsh synth sound design, punchy saturated drums, hazy guitars and energetic vocals performed in various styles makes Tar a very enjoyable and great album throughout it’s full 1 hour playing time. This is a great listen for fans of dark, murky experimental Electro-Acoustic music, Ritual music, Noise, Power Electronics and Death Industrial as the mixture of influences Kadaitcha embeds in their music always makes for surprising new turns and imaginative experimentation though always fed through their own musical imagery of darkness and mystery. Definitely a recommended album, so go check this album out.
You can purchase Tar as a digital download from Kadaitcha's Bandcamp page here: https://kadaitcha.bandcamp.com/album/tar?fbclid=IwAR06Ysi9EGAi9yKxXU5pLwzbg1za-KKIo1VNUh8dK_iTlU94YY3Wjg9yU9w
