Kashmir
No balance palace
Sony/BMG
There is really no better expression than 'artists' to describe the Danish band Kashmir. The four band members were originally a bunch of creative Copenhageners experimenting with different kinds of media until they decided that the best way to spread their message would be to wrap it up in rock'n'roll music. You still can feel this tendency of creative exploration in their music. Kashmir's fifth album "No balance palace" was released two years after their quite successful record "Zitilites". The band's artistic approach results in a never tiring spectrum from basic analysis/synthesis processes of sound as a medium to a mighty and aesthetic (re-)combination of sound as a ductile material. On a melancholic music journey, "No balance palace" passes almost everything between rather easy pop songs and quite uneasy guitar battlefields. But even though the album's title might let you suppose something different, it is indeed a very melodic balance. Atmospheric noise samples meet heavy rock'n'roll guitars at the same time the lyrics draw a poetic circle of topics like love, death and the decadent descent of western society. To sum it up, this record is not only a wonderful soundtrack for looking out the window and watching the cold autumn wind blow the leaves from the trees, it is definitely a masterpiece of music art. And yes, it's true, it was produced by Tony Visconti (Morrissey, etc.) and also contains songs featuring the legendary names of David Bowie (performing a powerful duet with singer Kasper Eistrup) and Lou Reed (reading one of Eistrup's poems about a mysterious black building in New York).
- Janis Meissner