The Kat Cosm |
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It takes about three minutes for opening track ‘Knightboat’ to really open itself up to you. Before that you are teased with fragments of beats and echoes of songs, but eventually it all breaks down to silence and restarts, only to emerge with the vocals of Berlin’s Jana Plewa and Sebastian Skalei sewing delicate harmonies above the floaty arpeggios arriving from the guitar.
Rather than being simple folk music backed by drifting drum machines, the electronic and organic components of The Kat Cosm are very much intertwined. It is an experimental voyage of sound, and as such, it doesn’t always hit home, but when it does it can light up any day. This is what happens as this song opens up like a flower in the morning, with so many sounds interlaced, causing the last three minutes to be the real highlight.
‘My Letter of Fate I Write For You Tonight’ is the second track from this mini album, riding a poignant piano melody, it slowly transforms itself with the vocal harmonies of Jana Plewa before finally fading away into its own simplicity. Following on is the very beautiful instrumental ‘Hot Girl’ and the demo version of ‘Circe’ which is a dreamy affair, again depending on piano to unveil a story which proves to be carefully intricate without too much electronic manipulation.
The album finally closes with three remixes of ‘Knightboat’ from Leafcutter John, TenEcke, and Mondomarc, all of which show new sides to the one song and produce a wide range of interesting sounds. The emphasis is much more on electronic tampering and glitching, though, so they offer very different perspectives, with perhaps the TenEcke remix edging it as the most natural result.
Steven McCarron
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