MEERKAT

Meerkat is a large collaboration of electronic musicians who are well known for their work as part of the Italian underground electronic scene (who mostly work with microtones, drones, field recordings and general sounds of impressive bleakness), but Matteo Uggeri, Andrea Ferraris and Andrea Marutti are the most recognizable names to me. The first album by this Meerkat group, Kapnos, is a continuance (part three) of a series known as the "Between The Elements quadrilogy" and is centered around the concept of smoke (Greek: "Kapnos").

Once you're aware of the concept, it comes off obviously in the music on this album. The sound of this music at first isn't too different from the rest of this scene's type of output, but once you let the tones really dig deep into your ears and mind, you can almost see the smoke. Throughout the album are the sounds of what I assume to be the crackling and popping of a fire, of either the tame and outdoorsy campfire or the destructive eternally burning flames of realities nightmares. It's also hard not to suspect electrical fires, obviously, given the type of music this is, after all. Across these burning soundscapes and buzzing drones are occasional bursts and pulses of doomy bass-atmosphere and the sharp sounds of combusting glass, among other atmospherically unsettling elements.

Beyond the actual sound, this is an album that has the effect of making me aware. Much of the material here is largely ambient by default, but it isn't boring in the least. This is destructive ambient for the foreground of your mind.

If your brain detects the heat or sounds of fire or the scent of smoke, your awareness levels are naturally supposed to reach a high level of stimulation that depending on the given situation could induce either fear or cozy relaxation. This is very much the effect of Meerkat's Kapnos.

Meerkat is the name of a parallel project formed by some of the great artisans of current experimental electronic music. The concept of "Kapnos" is inspired by Maurizio Bianchi, Hue (Matteo Uggeri) and the greek researcher Spyros Abatielos. It's an allegorical term taken from the Greek terminology and means "smoke" something related to combustion, chemical reactions and living between air and fire. This concept resonates particularly well with the sound materials provided in this effort: the stylistic register destined for instrumental micromal-ambient sounds immediately conceal some mystical meaning conveyed through natural symbols. "Kapnos" features a vast array of field recordings, weird concrete noises, precarious improvisations, electronic treatments, trancey-inspired drone buzz and other absorbing loops. It can be understood as a musical hermetic allegory of the cosmos, a private contemplative experience about sounds and silence that precede our being (language) and which are consequently related to the harmony of the spheres. This is an atmospheric album in the most uncompromising sense of the term. Another dimension to micro-tonal spacious electronic music.