Karma Voyage - Lights in Forgotten Places
What is the aspect of astonishment that embraces the need for an impressive immersion into truth?
You might know it by listening to the debut album by the Italian band Karma Voyage, which, after the eponymous Ep of 2021, follows a path where the medals have two sides, but reveal their identity, their entity, their specific weight, in a journey where everything touches lightly the greatness that generates, precisely, astonishment. There is no definition of such a fact other than the extraordinariness of its depth, in a circuit made up of sound trails and sacred words, because they investigate and put people before something absolute. Italy, which struggles to have a noble identity, in any field, should listen to this rhythmic encyclopaedia, read in the movements of probing souls, who do not seek ease, let alone privileges, but a path where eyes and ears are not apparatuses at the service of the senses but the first participants of a consciousness under construction.
The skills of the five Venetian Doctors of Knowledge are infinite and amassed with order, method, and patience in the nine compositions where the powerful sound expressed is only the base, not the window, let alone the content: they are all provided with a skin that moves, descends in depth and reveals contents that have as their common denominator the interest in giving expressive means which form an idea and lead it to matter. It is an enchanting album that overcomes boundaries, preconceptions and takes us to places where there are no flags or properties to defend or deny others. Their music brings people together, in a hypothetical encounter in which the chosen language (English) is the only one understandable, because no other could have rendered it in the same way, already delivering a first message: at least in this respect we are beginning to appropriate something that will equalise everyone.
And that is only the first point: the starting point.
Having decided on the language, what is needed now is a thought, something to give so that it can be exchanged, and the band does this clearly also through a stylistic method that presents at least three identifiable musical genres, which are not restrictive but only a means that once identified allows others to be noticed. They range from obvious psychedelia that is not muzzled, to a shoegaze attitude (often more in vocals than in the music, and that is another arrow in their favour) to Post-Rock that knows how to make itself powerful. And that's not all: there are Post-Punk sensibilities, craters from the 1980s that have been little explored by Italian bands, which they instead put their hands on, kneading, hiding, confusing, but in the end revealing crossovers that leave one open-mouthed.
And again: they go even further back with Hard-Rock seeds in their coats, because it is always better to protect certain roots, especially if the functionality of all these genres is to create their own style.
We go back as far as the 1960s, knowing, however, that there is no certainty in this: we can have sources of inspiration as far back as the beginning of the first millennium.
Mission perfectly accomplished to the tremendous satisfaction of the old scribe.
Do not believe, however, that grains of apocalyptic Folk, of Industrial particles, are also missing. In this album, nothing ends, everything continues, there are no barriers, but carpets like avalanches that instead of burying bodies highlight them: one of the many miracles here.
There are tensions, nervousnesses, always dilated, but concentric in these tracks in a perpetual state of grace: everything is evoked, invoked, exaggerated, contained but never abandoned, because this record is the manifesto of continuity also given by the perfect consequentiality of the songs, not a lucky puzzle, but a careful skill in creating a path that from a starting point leads to the arrival.
We have the good fortune of immense imaginary fields resting on these songs, places to be encountered and that invite our minds to lodge just enough to fall in love with them and appropriate them, because these songs are a unique and generous offer to have an experience that undoubtedly embellishes.
Before attempting to describe all the songs, a statement must be made: we are not worthy of the quality and truth of this immense work, but it is our duty to at least try to have the awareness that, when Art is of this workmanship, the privileges that may come depend only on our ability to read it. It would be good not to miss this opportunity.
Song by Song
1 - Silent Towns
The beginning is epic: Luca Castellaro's medieval vocals and his and Giuseppe Brunetti's oblique guitars open the mouth in a bubble of celestial shivers. Combined with Stefano Anoè's mighty drums and Alvise Scarpa's surgical bass, the track is a robust psychedelic contortion that shakes and opens the chest.
2 - Circle' Sides
Leonardo Sebastiani's keyboards are the first sign of a viaticum on the shores of a Post-Rock that puts its feet in the water of early 70s London psychedelia. The guitar this time chooses Catherine Wheel's shoegaze for a few seconds and it is a liturgical litany, a slow chorus that shakes the church. Vocals are the perfect homily for this heaven-bound gem.
3 New Foundations Feat Nils Ottensmeyer (The Blue Angel Lounge)
Two guitars like snakes on heat give the go-ahead: and it is perfection that manifests itself right from the start for this musical cusp that wounds and heals, for it is total power. Then a magical act happens: the guitar becomes gentle, on the road to purest romanticism, while the drumming counterbalances it, giving the feeling of universes in contact.
4 - Shine
Released as an 'opener' single, it is the slow gust of sirocco, like a song not included in Catherine Wheel's Ferment. But here we get the feeling that the guitars and drumming have emerged from a sunbeam while still being damp. And it is finally able to reveal an apotheosis within.
5 - 'Em
We are on the Everest of the album: from here you can see all the greatness of the Venetian band (if you ever had any doubts with the previous four episodes), as they are capable of progressions that go beyond the song form, like a crescendo held on a leash and released slowly. And it is Psych, Post-Rock, Shoegaze, Alternative, all blended into an evocative hardness.
6 - Branches Of An Old Ash
A seagull comes out of Giudecca: it is a guitar that, after an incipit with keyboards, takes flight between Shoegaze and Dreampop but then abandons it, after 45 seconds, because everything comes together in a psychedelic lake that leaves Venice and lands in the harbours of our imagination. The drums invent a syncopated march, the bass is a master of tasty clusters of notes swollen with warmth, and everything flies away, like a poignant day.
7 Distance And Echoes
What's beyond Everest? Here, this song is the lunar eclipse, from which this miracle comes: everything lives in compactness, in a din that is more emotional than musical, but great is the sword that pierces the heart given by the guitar notes that wound with their high register. And we here extend our hands to welcome this timeless jewel.
8 - City Of The Lame
It is not possible: another heart-warming blaze? Yes, undoubtedly, because this is the episode where the enchantment of sweetness meets an ever-changing musical structure, in a solid grip that makes listening an experience capable of bringing the senses under water. The 90s, with its shoegaze and alternative itches, are perfectly aligned in a tearful exchange.
9 - Shiver
The album that is in serious danger of not only being the most fascinating and intense Italian one of 2023, but of being able to enter many charts beyond the national space, finds in the end the kiss for a goodbye: it is impossible not to want to meet again this crazy band that here manages to write a song in continuous suspension, in a perfect review of their melodic and rhythmic arsenal shown in the previous eight tracks, to give a poetry soaked in noise and psychedelia.
Album out on 27th January 2023
Karma Voyage:
Vocals & Guitars: Luca CasteIIaro
Lead Guitars: Giuseppe Brunetti
Synths And Keyboards: Leonardo Sebastiani
Drums: Stefano Anoè
Bass Guitar: Alvise Scarpa
Icy Cold Records
Shyrec
Alex Dematteis
Musicshockworld
Salford
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