#ky brooks

[stylized-corpse]

Mat Ball and Ky Brooks @ Turbo Haus - 02/21/2025

[mywifeleftme]

180: Ky // Power is the Pharmacy

Power is the Pharmacy Ky 2023, Constellation (Bandcamp)

My streaming app’s stats tell me Power is the Pharmacy has been one of my most frequently-played albums of the year so far, and the physical LP has seen a fair few spins on my table as well. Though I’ve had the chance to see these songs developing over a number of live performances, with former Lungbutter vocalist (and pal) Ky Brooks’ music there was no way to really predict how the final product would sound. Their solo sets (usually using a small synth and variety of vocal pedals) run from elfin quirk to brutalist noise, while on the rare occasions all five extremely busy, geographically disparate members of their current band are assembled they make a formidable electronic-tinged heavy rock proposition.

Power is the Pharmacy falls somewhere between these extremes, a loose, jammy set of noisy art rock built around Brooks’ distorted, spoken-sung free verse. The shape and intensity of that vocal processing (Brooks’ chief instrument) varies from song to song: on the title track Ky sounds like a pair of berserk chat bots in a feedback loop, while “All the Sad and Lonely People” sort of approximates a vintage talk box. Ky’s lyrics weave dreamy associations, references to critical theory, and the occasional absurdist joke into a kind of visionary ramble:

the easiest things to heal are like unchewing something with a nice texture the harder things are like uncracking and come together sharply in a way that makes you worry about the integrity of your teeth it's like having a second secret set of teeth that do the opposite of what teeth do

and if the most powerful teeth are razor sharp and jagged the invisible jaw has just as much power it’s strong enough to put anything back the way it should be

To create Power’s music, Brooks improvised in studio with a small group of collaborators including electronic ambient musician Nick Schofield, jazz saxophonist James Goddard (AKA Skin Tone), and Andrés Salas of excellent Montreal-based Colombian punk band Bosque Rojo, then chopped and spliced these raw materials into loops. The backgrounds of these three musicians make a nice stylistic Venn diagram for where Ky’s music can be found, as does the presence in the additional credits of members of drone metallers Big Brave and experimental post-punks Gong Gong Gong. On “Revolving Door,” Ky dabbles in meditative drone, while “The Dancer” turns an arpeggiating synth loop and breakbeat-style drumming into something you could comfortably disassociate to at a club. Expansive album highlight “Dragons” even summons something akin to the classic Constellation Records post-rock sound, with its creeping pacing, waves of multi-instrumental distortion, and Farley Miller’s martial drumbeats.

Of course, the diversity of Ky’s collaborators also speaks to Brooks’ broad and deep connections within Montreal’s independent music scene, and to Power is the Pharmacy as an album defined by these relationships. The album is dedicated to Joni Sadler, Ky’s Lungbutter bandmate who died at just 36 from a brain aneurysm, and much of Pharmacy’s tone and lyrical content can be understood as Brooks’ efforts to process a profound grief. But there is also the sense of trying to bring a once-vital community back together, in the wake of not only the loss of Sadler but the isolation enforced by Québec’s draconian lockdown mandates. The pandemic has done few favours to an experimental scene already pressed to define itself apart from the Godspeed-adjacent wave of bands who found such remarkable international success, but Power is the Pharmacy is a testament to the quiet endurance of a generation of talented musicians and community builders, and the oblique paths of healing.

180/365

[abibeur]

and the dancer makes his move to the center of the room he's got his own special groove and he will bow in the face of time he will bow, he will bow

it's just where you hang your hat the unchangingness of that oh the chance to be together loving one another do you miss your other lover

and its going way too fast and the subtle line says: make it last but you know i don't know how i will bow, i will bow

Ky, The Dancer (2023)