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Review: Kavadi, Kavadi (Ghost King, 2005)

I'm not familiar with this project at all, but here we have a two-man noise group that unloads a couple of untitled tracks of brooding dark ambient drones that are actually pretty damn cool at times. Expect lots of rumbling low-end with twisting waves of feedback cutting in and out with a few slightly crisper little distorted textures seeping in for added layering on occasion. Side B's contribution is a little more stripped down, with a thinner style that lacks the depth and texture of side A, focusing more on heavily reverberated tones that are suppressed in the distance behind windy midrange and a couple of other abstract little glitchy sounds that swirl around here and there. There are still a couple of interesting moments that hint at a nice ethereal edge, but overall side A is a lot more interesting to me. The clear orange tape comes in a matte envelope that looks to be handmade out of a textured red/orange colored paper. There's a tiny insert inside, also on matte red paper, that contains very little information, and the band name is spraypainted on the front. That's about it. Honestly I don't feel like the packaging represents the darkness of the music in any way here, and in fact the aesthetic of the presentation is, in my opinion, a rather poor choice that misrepresents the quality of the cassette's contents. Not a big deal, but definitely something to think about in the future since there's actually a lot of promise to much of this work, you know? The release is limited to 100 copies, so drone enthusiast may want to give this one a shot. Not bad. I know they could do better, but I'm really into the bulk of that first selection.

[Ghost King]
Running time - 20:00 (approximately), Tracks: 2
[Notable tracks: both are untitled, but side A is better]
Ghost King - http://www.existest.org/ghostking/