Exclusive Track Premier: "Waas"
Belgium's Kassei emerge with their debut album "Muur"
With math rock's expansion into many other genres since its ambiguous conception, a musical recipe ever leaning towards global domination has pursued reaching into the impossible. Every time we take notice, math rock presents itself at the forefront of imaginative modernity within the world at large. The band Kassei are no different in utilizing math rock's fast-paced directional shifting amidst scrapbook like unfolding of all one's influences into one story. All the while faced with problem-solving, inventive clever ways to compress a mash-up of tales into something fluid and complete. The group greets the listener with immediate tension and their unique take on archetype building within musical sculpturing. Belgium’s secluded hillsides have inspired and sourced a seeming coherence to angular and smooth circular terrains interjecting, likely through day to day exposure. The song "Waas" blends classic nostalgic warm toned delay with a peculiar offsetting dissonance that seems to rock the boat so to speak. Translucent sonic blankets carry non-rationalized behavioral unpredictability. Steady going rock riffage follows this intermingling to create a pathway to punchy drum interference and unexpected melodious sophistry. While the background is heavily inducted into German-style minimal abrasive tendencies, this track differs from what most would deliver and flawlessly executes the colliding of two separate worlds. Mind-melting yet not disruptive, they make your kill feel like heaven, and thereafter forever seeking more. Ending with a gentle piano melody like a music box feelings of nostalgia wash all known signs of anguish away with the flow of the tide back out to the sea. If you're a fan of A. Armada or North End you'll love this record!
Bio:
Math rock? Post rock? Call it "cobblestone rock." Four musicians from across the musical spectrum and hailing from various areas of Belgium came together in an upgraded garden shed in Geraardsbergen, one of the country’s sleepiest provincial towns, and made whatever they felt sounded right.
“Muur” is their debut album and presents instrumental rock in the shape of a cobblestone: angularity in jagged, unpredictable, but picturesque forms. Making a virtue out of their lack of chops to pull off math rock’s naturally expected acrobatic musicianship, they simply play loud, groovy, and sometimes unabashedly pretty.
PS: The proposed genre name has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that “kassei” means “cobblestone” in Dutch.Kassei may not break your head with incomprehensible meters and rhythms, but it might break your bones with its raw ferocity, taking you on a thorough shake and shuffle across the cobblestone rural hills of Belgium where they wrote these songs.
