Khanate: Capture & Release (Hydra Head)
Purchased at Eide's
Remember 2016? When, due to our insane presidential electoral system, a con man and reality show game host was elected president? How could we forget? My daughter was living in Brooklyn at the time, and she said it seemed as though everyone in the city was quiet and depressed. They all knew what Trump was like, what he'd do as president, having experienced decades of his lying bullshit.
The people I knew who were the most upset were all Jewish. They saw in Trump the sort of racist, fascist autocrat that their ancestors had dealt with a generation or two back. You can say that it's unfair if you wish, I'm just reporting their attitude.
I was feeling dark myself, very dark. We generally have TV or radio news on much of the time. Once Trump's victory was announced, I turned them all off and didn't take in so much as a radio news update for at least a month. I couldn't tolerate it.
I decided I needed music that fit my mood. I had already started to put on a Swans record I had, the early Young God EP. I reached out online to my friend Adam MacGregor for suggestions. I asked for suggestions for music that was "severe". That descriptor can be taken a couple of different ways: it could mean sonically harsh, or highly calculated (think of early Stockhausen as being severe) or excessively bleak. I think he took it to mean the latter.
He mentioned a few band names, the first of which was this one, Khanate. I'm pretty separated from the independent "experimental" metal scene, so I didn't know anything about them. The next day, I found myself at Eide's, plunking down cash for this record. Once I brought it home, it was never far from my turntable for weeks.
This is indeed one of the bleakest bands I've ever heard. I don't know how you could get any darker than this. The music is first of all agonizingly slow, with long passages of almost nothing happening. When Alan Dubin's strained screaming enters, it's hair raising. "IT'S NOT ENOUGH" he yells, and I believe him.
Remember in high school literature, when a teacher tries to explain the idea of the antihero? The character is not an enemy or antagonist, but a protagonist with unheroic characteristics. Khanate are antivirtuosic. There's nothing here that dexterously difficult, not the precisely delivered lines of a Robert Fripp. Yet, I find it amazing they know where they are in their own music, when so little happens sometimes. I think it's highly impressive.
So why put this on today? Oh, a series of frustrations I suppose. I've had technical glitches with my technology at work. It was all supposed to be corrected today, but I still had problems. And of a class of six students at 9am this morning, two showed up on time, one ten minutes late, three not at all. I know it's on them, but I feel held up not knowing who will or won't arrive.
When I returned home, my wife wants to know why I didn't respond to her text messages. I proved to her that none had gone through to me (more technology glitches). She wanted me to know that our hot water heater had burst, yet another technology snafu.
She's off to visit a relative in the hospital, leaving the house to just me. It's not that I can't listen to something like this with her around, but it's easier when she's gone and I don't have to be concerned with the content or volume.
I doubt people who know me would be surprised I have trouble letting go of frustrations and anger. My back is still knotted up from earlier today. Khanate, take me away!
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