TOKYO MASK – route painless
(CD, low impedance)
I wonder what has happened to
Kostas Karamitas aka Tokyo Mask in the last years; meaning ever since his
last album “hinterlands”
was released on Low Impedance almost three years ago in 2007. This is still
“the most eerie, dark and almost
ghoulishly sombre trip hop imaginable” (as written about his second EP “backbone”) but
he has added an overtly direct aggressiveness that is a surprise. And
sometimes hard to swallow. Or I have changed so much in the last years? But
I still like Slayer and Lamb Of God on top of my usual diet of extravagant
experimental music and electronic noise, so I don’t know. Maybe the whole
political and social situation in Greece, the home of Karamitas, is adding
its thing to this music. The whole no-future-view, the riots in the streets,
the burning cars and busses, the killed people, the armed faceless police
forces. All of this compressed into music that is more more and more
industrial – and if you remember correctly the coldness and fear of the
early Eighties, the Poll Tax riots in the UK and the fear of Atomic warfare
all over Europe, the analogy becomes even more persistent.
“Route Painless” leaves
only a few moments to catch your breath. Most of the times it is a
monolitic, compressed mass of electronic beats filled with massive layers of
noise and distortion. Yet, it is also a shining black, polished vast hunk of
music. There are hailstorms and thunder, sometimes in the distance,
sometimes close by and sometimes right over you, but it is always harsh
conditions. The pace is also monolithically slow and pounding. Heavy beats
make the ground tremble, inducing fear and awe and respect, like something
big and uncomprehensible, probably evil is rising over the horizon. Nothing
like from a HP Lovecraft novel and nothing from War Of The Worlds or
anything, but more like a presence of something new, a new age that will be
very different from ours.
Five tracks clocking in at
almost fourty minutes, so you know these are epic tracks. Karamitas is
taking more and more giant leaps in creating his visions, stepping higher
and higher to a more and more unique viewpoint. Whereas the first four
tracks usually build from a short intro to their massive, percussive form,
the last track “New Gods Call” takes its time, droning on and on, and
building very much like Johann Strauss “Also spoke Zarathustra” (if you
remember that from Space Odysse 2001). Only, that the release given with the
big chords in the classical piece never comes. Here there is only the eerie,
foreboding ambience that prevails. A spooky piece of music, but shaping the
atmosphere very well. And even though this is the most pristine and most
glistening track on here, reduced and subtle, it still has that power all
the other tracks have as well.
Within the roster of Low
Impedance and its focus on electronic rhythms and technoid ambient, Tokyo
Mask really stands out as a formative artist, very much central to the core
of what is essential for the Greek Label. Other releases (Biomass, Pridon, Oldman, Qebo) are either
somewhere close to this; or really far away (Mary and the Boy,
Merzbow or Mathias
Delplanque), but they are always great to listen to.
