You can find pretty much all of the information available about this band via Mr. Google. I don’t feel much of an obligation to repeat what you can read elsewhere. I recommend looking into this band — they’re doing fabulously creative music and creating adventure and fun at the same time. You can find their music on bandcamp and in various videos posted on Youtube, including the ~30 minute live performance video that brought them to everyone’s attention a month ago. As of this writing, that video has 4.4 muh muh muh million views.
That’s Khn on the microtonal guitar and bass loops, and on the right is Klek the drummer. I don’t see much about the two guys as individuals yet, and that may be because of the sort-of anonymity their costumes allow for. For now, it’s probably sufficient to most new fans that they exist, that they’re on some wavelength frequency vibe thingie that they have deepened thoughtfully and organically and that it’s a wavelength frequency vibe thingie that is insular and unique.
Mostly what I see talked about in the various articles and reaction videos and what-have-yous is the costumes and the microtonal guitars. Which is fine, those are two techniques that are quite worthy of attention. The band’s visuals are deceptively bold and simple, but like so much about this band, clearly result from a great deal of thought. Note how Klek’s headgear brings his physicality up near to level with Khn’s, as an example.
But more centrally, here’s Music Theory Youtuber David Bennett discussing the strategies the band uses to keep their microtonal music from being atonal chaos, and instead actually pleasing to western ears:
Music like this comes from years of work and intense thought about what will work, and Khn and Klek have definitely found a winning formula. Propulsive, melodic, adventurous, quirky… these performances are decidedly winsome.
The musicianship level is quite high; incorporating odd time signatures into looping requires a deft touch. It’s also of note that Khn will get to four or even five consonant voicings, or carefully constructed dissonant voicings, as noted in the Bennett video. I also have a great appreciation for Klek’s drumming. Every rock band is only as good as their drummer, and as you might be able to tell, my opinion is that this is a truly great rock band.
There are layers to this project, and I won’t go into them more than I have, because one of the great joys of this experience for me is what I hope to leave for you — the joy of discovery.
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