Kinski

With most rock bands, experimentation extends only to the limits of the vocalist’s versatility. The players could range from fey indie pop to death metal in a single song, but without a style-appropriate singer for each form, such genre-jumping sounds like gimmickry. Instrumental bands operate without such restraints. They can turn repetition, a source of endless annoyance in ad nauseam vocal choruses, into a form of transcendental meditation. “Hot Stenographer,” the opening track on Kinski‘s recently released Alpine Static, evolves from a fractal psychedelic progression to a space-truckin’ groove to an ominous lingering note to a droning pattern that could leave listeners drooling in an open-eyed dream state. The Seattle band’s stutter-step dual-guitar riffs recall Black Sabbath and Hawkwind, but Kinski also veers in the opposite direction to avant-noise feedback detonations and glass-rose-delicate melodies. Kinski’s records, and its legendarily loud live sets, work as coherent wholes, with every soft-loud dynamic shift, rhythm-driven power surge and trippy tangent clearly tethered to a majestic compositional master plan.