[FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=-1]Kayo Dot
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When such bands as Led Zeppelin invented heavy metal, they were simply supercharging the blues, using vocals and guitar that sounded intimate even at extreme volume. Such contemporary art-metal groups as Kayo Dot, which performed Thursday at the Warehouse Next Door, treat heavy rock as a sort of chamber music, emphasizing the power and precision of the ensemble over individual expression. The Boston group could be described as the creature of Toby Driver, who composes the music, plays guitar and occasionally sings.
Yet the band, which couldn't fit all eight of its members on the club's small stage, set up so that Driver was facing away from the audience. Kayo Dot permits solos but not star turns.
The group played a 45-minute set that comprised three long pieces, two of them from its new album, "Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue." (That's another characteristic of chamber-metal outfits: They'd never stoop to titling anything "Whole Lotta Love.'') The pieces began quietly, with passages that featured samples, Mia Matsumiya's violin, Forbes Graham's array of horns or Driver's vocals, whose thinness was the group's most indie-rock aspect.
Gradually, the music built to howling climaxes in which grinding guitars and galloping drums combined into an all-encompassing shriek. Not exactly a human shriek, though -- there was drama in the music but no theater in the performance. The effect resembled an orchestral performance of Wagner or Grieg: a skillful evocation of a tempest in which the performers stood outside the storm, untouched by wind or rain.
-- Mark Jenkins
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When such bands as Led Zeppelin invented heavy metal, they were simply supercharging the blues, using vocals and guitar that sounded intimate even at extreme volume. Such contemporary art-metal groups as Kayo Dot, which performed Thursday at the Warehouse Next Door, treat heavy rock as a sort of chamber music, emphasizing the power and precision of the ensemble over individual expression. The Boston group could be described as the creature of Toby Driver, who composes the music, plays guitar and occasionally sings.
Yet the band, which couldn't fit all eight of its members on the club's small stage, set up so that Driver was facing away from the audience. Kayo Dot permits solos but not star turns.
The group played a 45-minute set that comprised three long pieces, two of them from its new album, "Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue." (That's another characteristic of chamber-metal outfits: They'd never stoop to titling anything "Whole Lotta Love.'') The pieces began quietly, with passages that featured samples, Mia Matsumiya's violin, Forbes Graham's array of horns or Driver's vocals, whose thinness was the group's most indie-rock aspect.
Gradually, the music built to howling climaxes in which grinding guitars and galloping drums combined into an all-encompassing shriek. Not exactly a human shriek, though -- there was drama in the music but no theater in the performance. The effect resembled an orchestral performance of Wagner or Grieg: a skillful evocation of a tempest in which the performers stood outside the storm, untouched by wind or rain.
-- Mark Jenkins
