Kayo Dot: Stained Glass EP (Hydra Head, 1/11/11)
Kayo Dot: “Stained Glass” excerpt
[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Kayo_Dot_Stained_Glass_excerpt.mp3|titles=Kayo Dot: “Stained Glass” excerpt]
Toby Driver and his rotating cast of fellow multi-instrumentalists in Kayo Dot have always embraced the dizzying difficulty of modern composition and the wandering feeling that comes with 10-minute-plus art-rock songs. The heavier moments of its 2003 debut, Choirs Of The Eye (and of Driver’s previous band, Maudlin of the Well), might have tempted some to think of Kayo Dot as a prog-metal outfit, but even then, it wasn’t that simple.
Driver seems to be able to constantly mutate what’s at the center of his music — sometimes tasteful strings, sometimes creepily melodic electric guitar, but often a beautiful, tense mesh of fragments. The lone 20-minute track that is the new Stained Glass EP revels in that unique flexibility.