Ducks Battle Satan

I bought this record last year and I started writing about it in January of this year. Since then I’ve tinkered with the post but I haven’t come much closer to explaining why I love this record so much. Since it’s purchase I’ve tracked down the  rest of his back catalogue on Load and despite listening to this band a lot I’ve struggled with saying anything sensible

I love this record like I love Burning Star Core’s Challenger, Yellow Swans Deterioration  and Menche’s Jugularis. All of those records are incredible in their own way and now I can add another to the list. Kites is the artistic name for the noise created by US musician, Chris Forgues.  He produces noise in the same tradition as Carlos Giffoni and it is Giffoni who is probably the closest peer I’ve heard thus far although when he lends his vocals to his tracks, Prurient also becomes  a sensible starting point. I’d heard about Kites previously, usually mentioned in the same breath as Skaters, Hair Police and Wolf Eyes. I’m not really sold on those comparisons as this record is more Merzbow (if you can listen past the vocals) than visceral horror noise-fest. Indeed it may be one of the  most varied noise records I’ve heard so far. Mr Forgues is obviously not afraid to mix his sound up a bit and to experiment with both space and air rather than focusing solely on the blacker than black  noise of some of this contemporaries. Yet in exploring space and air, Kites does not take an easy route of producing transcendent drone  but through taming harsh electronics  into a much more listenable form. This record is very very very good. Like 9 out of 10 good.

This entry was posted on September 19, 2009 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Music, noise with tags Kites, Music, noise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.