Comacozer, Kalos Eidos Skopeo: Lines Across Spectra
Posted in Reviews on December 14th, 2017 by JJ Koczan
Sydney-based trio Comacozer aren’t exactly keeping secrets when it comes to what they’re going for with their sound. Among the four extended tracks of Kalos Eidos Skopeo, which is ostensibly their third album — their first having been comprised of two prior EPs; their second being 2016’s Astra Planeta (review here) — the band blend cosmic expanse and earthbound heft to immersion-geared instrumentalism across nearly an hour’s runtime. Their ambition is to entrance more than pummel, but that doesn’t mean a song like “Mystagmus” or the preceding opener “Axis Mundi” don’t have stretches within them that come across Sleep-derived enough to make one wish Al Cisneros would enter with a ritualistically-patterned verse, just that there’s more going on within the 52 minutes of the Headspin Records release than the rolling of riffs.
Some of the album’s most effective moments are its most cosmic, and with the additional flourish provided by the synth of Frank Attard — who also engineered and mixed the recording and drums in psych-improv specialists Frozen Planet….1969 — alongside the guitars of Rick Burke, the bass of Rich Elliott and Andrew Panagopoulos‘ drums, a sense of progression is palpable from the last record to this one. All the more, perhaps, because the songs themselves have grown bigger in keeping with the overall sound, and become longer and more immersive, and when one considers that Attard has helmed each of Comacozer‘s records to-date, it argues all the more that the progression the band has undertaken is willful. That is to say, they’ve settled into a process of craft and know what they want to do aesthetically, so what’s happening with Kalos Eidos Skopeo is the next stage of that process being realized.
It’s also hypnotic as hell. There is not one among the four inclusions — “Axis Mundi” (13:39), “Nystagmus” (12:25), “Hylonomus” (13:43) and “Enuma Elish” (12:58) — that doesn’t lull the listener away from what one generally thinks of as consciousness, and in terms of the overarching breadth of the thing, it’s telling that Comacozer begin with a track that references the tree connecting earth and the ethereal and end with one that calls out the ancient Babylonian myth of creation. If one keeps in mind the early instrumental meanderings of My Sleeping Karma, then before “Axis Mundi” swells in volume just before the 10-minute mark, the track seems to spread itself out in a similar fashion, but it’s really just the first stage of the larger submersion that plays out, and “Nystagmus” — the title of which derives from a medical condition in which one’s eye makes rapid and uncontrolled movements — runs perhaps even deeper.
Again with Attard‘s synth work as a major factor, “Nystagmus” executes a long-form linear build, setting itself forward, but seeming to plateau for a while, look around itself, and mindfully drift. The effect on the audience is utterly serene. It gets denser, louder and more actively rolling in the back half as it begins to come to a head, but there are a few minutes there where Comacozer actually make it seem like time has jumped. Burke and Elliott offer such warmth of tone and Panagopoulos such care in his percussive flow, that it’s almost impossible not to get lost in the progression of the resulting work. I am somebody who listens to a lot of psychedelic rock. A lot. I listen to a lot of heavy jams. Very few seem to pull one away from their own brain in the way “Nystagmus” does. It’s a triumph of chill.
Comacozer only increase their overall reach from that point. “Hylonomus” — named for one of the earliest or perhaps even the first of the reptiles — begins with Eastern-inflected strum and moves in its first minute to guitar drift joined soon by the bass and drums, carrying an early tension but holding it until seemingly the last possible minute. As a build, it is more linear but perhaps not as subtle as “Nystagmus” before it, but once again, the fluidity with which the band brings it to life resounds with its liquidity. This doesn’t sound like a compliment but it is one in context because I think it’s what they’re going for: It might actually put you to sleep.
And when it wants you to wake up — the escalating drums leading a forward charge that starts at 11:22 — it’s the most active Comacozer get at any point on Kalos Eidos Skopeo, with a genuine surge in tempo that neither “Nystagmus” nor “Axis Mundi” brought to bear, and from which “Enuma Elish” soon enough departs again to reset the base from which it will embark on one last excursion into the outer edges of the atmosphere. It is encouraging to hear the way in which heft and ambient spaces coexist throughout Kalos Eidos Skopeo — which trims down its 52-minute runtime for the vinyl edition — and the sheer patience of the work as a whole, but worth emphasizing that while the three-maybe-four-piece have established a place for themselves within this sphere, there’s still room for them to progress in how they function structurally and in how their songs are framed, whether that’s achieved through bringing a sense of variety to the proceedings by further expanding arrangements or simply changing up when they get louder in a given piece.
It’s also important to remember they’re still only a year out from what was essentially their first record, so there’s plenty of time for that development to happen, and the commitment to all things molten they show throughout this colorful offering bodes significantly well for their longer-term prospects. One hopes they keep exploring with the vigor and obvious passion they do here.
