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Khora
Gestures of Perception
Marionette - 2024
Michael Panontin
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Sifting through Matthew Ramolo's words is an almost Sisyphean task, such is the density of his description of his work. On Gestures of Perception, his latest double LP and complementary book release as Khora, his musical incarnation for the last 15+ years, he has this to say:
"This album, comprising a double record and attendant book, presented itself to my consciousness as a cascade of contents and peregrinations around magical and alchemical processes which could instigate or excite processes of deep and unexpected transformation in the listener and thereby serve as a true initiatory program. The music uses evocation of various traditions of the archaic and sacred to produce an environment in which the witness can access or imaginally project primal dimensions of their awareness and thereby induce a consciousness of time which breaches the transcendent. The book serves as a philosophical guide or scaffolding through the inner worlds and processes the music evokes, wrapping alchemical, archaeological, and spiritual history and speculation with various theories of language, creation, shamanic musicking, magic, healing, and geometry."
Thankfully, the music on Gestures... is a whole lot more accessible...and satisfying. Like much of Khora's earlier output, which stretches all the way back to the self-released debut, Silent Your Body is Endless, Gestures... melds traditional instruments like keyboards, flute and guitar with field sounds, feedback, contact electronics and loads of percussion. A couple of tracks - the opener, 'Golden Femur', with its woozy electronics and its equally dizzying sibling, 'Ligature of Mineral' - hint at the 1980 Jon Hassel/Brian Eno collab Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics.
But that comparison only goes so far. The real story is the extensive use of treated percussion, more obvious here than on any of his previous efforts. Ramolo anchors things with an array of instruments - rattle and frame drums, seed pod sticks, random metal objects, meditation bowls, kalimbas, bells - and the results are riveting. Whereas Hassle and Eno created a liminal approximation of the natural world, Ramolo takes us on a similar journey across imagined cultures, at times seemingly African, at others Asian or Southeast Asian. This works best on tracks like 'Rigpa', where the exotic elements are tempered with more familiar electronic sounds. But even better are the less overtly cultural pieces, like the otherworldly 'Pneumatic Magic' or the hypnotic 'Hermetic Salt', the latter especially a deeply enthralling listening experience.
Gestures of Perception is one of Ramolo's best works so far and is most definitely worth tracking down.
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Khora
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Suggestions
Khora
Silent Your Body is Endless
Constellation
The Wesleys
The Wesleys
Little Village
Camera
Dimanche (download track)
(independent)
Jon Mckiel
Hex
You've Changed
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