Kismet (english)

INSANITY IS FREEDOM COMFORMITY IS DEATH

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Balcani aflame.

"A brilliant album that you should listen to when you are down […] when you own madness on the waves of the zurla and gaida in down-under atmosphere, a million light years away from home" (Petar Lukovich, XL Zabava, Yugoslavia)

"If you want to get an idea of the type of music they play, imagine a Macedonian funeral march put to rock music in a echo chamber and you will be well on the Well" (John Carvery, 3BPS, Australia)

KISMET: "Wake Up Gods" (Tone Casualties)

The best acknowledgement that Balcans today are one of the most mystic and spiritually rich with inspiration places of Europe - will be to listen the newest album "Wake Up Gods" by Kismet. Living in Australia for the last five years as political emigrants, pranks from Macedonia, recording in Melbourn, releasing their works on californian label Tone Casualties (Hollywood, sound native land for Hungry Ghost, Paul Schutze, and in nearest plans - Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Robert Williams from storied Captain Beefheart), Gorazd Capovski, Ilja Stojanovski and Pece Kozanovski will tell you on Yugoslavia more, than any mass-media, having destroy all your beliefs about this country. Starting in 1994 in the continuation of the cult group MIZAR, that had extensive success at the end of 80-ies - beginning of 90-ies on Balcans, the Macedonian invasion in industrial-ethno-gothic context "for following Millennium", project Kismet sounds today as a present war, going in the mountains of Macedonia - a war for return to the true traditional sources of the Balkan sound inspiration through exceedingly strange and original futuristic syntheses of experimental music, apocalypse of electronic modern sounding, gothic and ethno-culture. Between the wisdom of ritualistic traditions and hate, between the sadness, love and the scream of pain lies that frontier band, rich with atmosphere of sounding, recorded with deep emotional power - dinamic, atmospherically melodramatical, and truely unique. Since the times of Laibach nor one creation coming from Balcans did not seize and did not mesmerize the listener not as a next exotic modernized export, but as a real faithful creativity, imbrued with its past and love for the native land. Thence the ideology is in Kismet's blood, regurgitated in the different gammas by hypnotic and dinamic electronic post-industrial beats and digital soundscapes in combination with traditional macedonian instruments - tambourines, jourla, tampani and dajda, gregorian chorals of thousands overheated ligaments and deeply gloomy dramatic post dark wave vocal of Gorazd Capovski in the veins of Velvet Underground, The Young Gods, Swans and Fields Of The Nephilim, that is drawing in cool tired dreaming the destructive image of the human race future, sounding extreme in the most tense fragments of their chronicle-album "Wake Up Gods". As one folk, one nation. Because when the pain leaves, sooner or later you go back to the roots of past, to get charged from their eternity by the power, that enables the next life.

Their first record Kismet have released in 1994 in the format of EP - "Dormant Dire". Then a change in sound has followed with the first LP "Damian's War" (1995). "Wake Up Gods" was written on industrial post-modern cinematic and electro-atmospheric Tone Casualties on the 9th of september, 1997, under the direction of the stage manager Mark Ingram with the atomic deep-water torpedo and collaged pin-up girl on the layout.

The last work of macedonian band presents one united microcosm of internal cogitations on the example of their native Balcans, on fates of the beloved land - its past and present: from sacral gods of the past to the political realities of the present, shipped in the mixed area of cybernetic spaces of modern sound with archaic ethno sounding. Starting with springy rhythmic pulsations and sad singing melodism of Macedonian chorals, seeping with shocking storming reverberations on the title, sounding as a prelude track, it's ungovernable breaking with the cool techno-beats of dance-industrial dancefloor in the riverbed of Chemical Brothers and KMFDM. The splendid following "Until The Next War" deeply sinks a listener into the world of rites, ethnic incantations of Chernogorje, walls of monasteries and widows in black, hiding in the fissures of the rocks the proud spirit and natural greatness - the sounding of the folk instruments and beautiful chantings of female vocals suppress electronics and guitars, that crush again with electrostatic low pulsations and deep-water claustrophobia on "Submarine", blasting at the end with a reflexing dark-industrial assault, reminding of "Envoye" by the early The Young Gods. The provoking bass and percussions rhythm section, mixed with tractile choral chants and ethnic instruments, illustrate the sounding as "dub" instrumental prologue track "Ortoma", converting into hypnotic guitar dark-wave cover "Venus In Furs" of Velvet Underground, monotonously downfalling as a serpentine, as an early rueful snow behind the window, as a retelling of a gloomy prophetic tale of Velvets. "Polen" in minimalism of the transformations of ancient East-European past, Balkan' chants and electromechanic rhythms, outlives a real renaissance on "Post Communism" - that sounds sprained-singful, as a prayer in the strange mixture of post-industrial and laryngeal-gothic folk, passing its sacral ritual sonic circle in "Nothing" and "Voden 2048", and terminating with the high note of "Leison" this strange magic journey into the depth of images and gods, leaving the listener for a long time after the completion in deep cogitations on the dramatic way of the folk of East Europe and the fates of the world.

Igor Vaganov

Links: http://www.tonecasualties.com/data/TC/kismet.html