Kila rocks. There’s just something about their powerful, furiously trance-inducing rhythms that moves the listener at least to finger-tapping, if not body movement and sometimes even straight-up head-banging. “Are we still talking about Irish music here?” you might ask. In the most literal and defined sense, yes, Kila is a group from Ireland with musical roots firmly planted in their homeland. Except for light touches of electric guitar and bass on a couple of tracks, the mind-numbing layers of instrumentation on the album are made up almost entirely of the unplugged variety.
But there’s a lot more going on here. Kila specializes in building coherent musical monoliths out of thickly layered sounds, based on instrumental arrangements that are almost orchestral in scale. “Glanfaidh Mé,” the most powerfully melodramatic tune on an album lovingly stuffed with anthemic density, features the Ceathrar String Quartet and the operatic vocals of Luis Rodriguez in a gutsy, uncompromisingly heavy opening track. As it achieves its desired emotional effect almost too effectively, my instincts tell me that this track probably belongs closer to the end of the album. But this merely shows Kila’s lack of concern withsticking to musical conventions.
Besides sonic density, what makes Kila albums so much fun is the wide breadth of world instruments and musical influences that plane crash their songs like Ron Brown’s EVIDENCE at a Wesleyan dance party on Lawn Ave. This can most obviously be heard in the percussion section, which usually has at least five or six kinds of hand drums, shakers, bells, cymbals, tambourines and other toys on most tracks. Turkish drums and hammered dulcimers bring a taste of the Mediterranean, while oscillating machine gun-style mandolin strumming conjures Andean mists. Breakneck tempos and minor-key choruses on “The Mama Song” reveal Eastern European and roma (gypsy) influences in the band’s sound. The listener can almost feel a Caribbean breeze in the marimba and wooden xylophone on the dreamy “Bully’s Acre.”
Epic is a term thrown around somewhat gratuitously in the music world (yours truly being a self-admitted perpetrator). I once read a really funny commentary about how epic is used in the entertainment industry as a euphemism for highly overpaid and/or over-hyped artists and projects, for example: “Boy, was Ben Affleck epic in ‘Pearl Harbor.’” Seriously though, “Luna Park” is well deserving of this epithet: no fewer than three tracks out of 11 clock in at over 9 minutes. The penultimate title track almost hits 11, and dang it, you never want it to end!!
No one knows how to build up to musical climax quite like Kila, with an almost formulaic ease that puts many similar efforts in the rock world to shame—and making use of no electrification, mind you. Here’s an example of how it works, using the track “Baroki” as a standard archetype of the Kila epic: the band starts off with the somber musings of the flute, moves on to patterns of string-layering, comes in with some pipes before the guitar and other strings pick it all up a notch. Soon the winds (and occasional brass) hook you with a run of catchy interlocking melodies; melodic variations follow, each instrument taking the lead in turn while the others converse harmonically with the lead. At some point during the tune, the music will ease off a bit before you get too caught up. But before you can catch your breath, an almost imperceptibly slow crescendo begins to rise, battalions of percussion inducing trance until BANG!—the music cuts out just before the massive climax that you are expecting. We are, after all, only mid-album. In this way, Kila works crescendos not only within songs but also between songs on the album. By the time you reach minute nine of the title track’s air siren bombing of uileann pipes your head feels like it’s going to explode in the most pleasurable sense imaginable.
Not to say it’s all brute force on “Luna Park.” Some of the freshest sounds on the album appear in more subtle ways on tracks like “Hebden Bridge,” with it’s fairly traditional Irish framework; on the country twang of “Béilín Meala”; and on the somber final track, “The Hour Before Dawn,” the piano reverberating with a haunting minimalism that reminds me of the recent works of Anouar Brahem [enter promotional plug for an incredible Tunisian musician that any fan of melancholy piano music must check out]. But like I said, Kila rocks, and for this reviewer it is their incomparable tour de force tracks that keep me coming back to them time and again. So turn it up loud and jam to the thundering glee of the founders of Hard Celtic.
Also recommended: Kila’s “Lemonade” and Buns and Lunasa’s “Otherworld” and “The Merry Sisters of Fate.”
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