[reviews] afe121cd
meerkat: kapnos

Meerkat is a loose confederation of young Italian experimental musicians and sound artists. On "Kapnos", the third release in a proposed quadrilogy, the group, which has ten members (give or take), never play as a single unit. Instead each of the album's seven pieces features a different subset of the larger ensemble.

In spite of this, the pieces are very much cut from the same cloth, with each composed of similar basic ingredients: field recordings, guitar drones, the occasional synthesizer, and lots of subtle electronics.

The title "Kapnos" is the Greek word for smoke and, appropriately, the music drifts and swirls in kind. It's a lovely, meditative record, but with enough rough elements (mostly courtesy of some glorious location recordings) to give it a bit of an edge and keep things interesting. Very nice indeed.

[Susanna Bolle]