Swiss Music Ensemble KALI Trio Release Second Album LOOM

KALI Trio is a Swiss post-genre band. They function as a collective, with every member contributing equally to the writing and creative processes. Their original score for Thomas Imbach’s movie NEMESIS will arrive in 2021.

LOOM is the second album by KALI trio and shows the consequent development of the original style of the working band. The three Swiss musicians Nicolas Stocker (Drums), Urs Müller (E-Gitarre) und Raphael Loher (Piano) weave the various threads of their stylistic background together with relish and fresh skillfulness on their musical loom. The music, created together as an organism, is continuously charged in the four tracks and in the overall dramaturgy of the album and unfolds its rhythmic pull and its mysterious atmosphere in a subtle and inexorable manner.

LOOM consists of only four compositions, but clocks in at a few seconds short of the 45 minute mark! It’s a beast in scope, but airy (literally) in feel, hence easy to inhale. Each piece plays like the equivalent of a time-lapse of a looming cloud formation – a liquid progression of shifting shapes, changing density as well as shadow and light play. By the virtue of working with subtle iterations of form and using extended swaths of time as the equivalent of a large-scale canvas, the material evokes the mechanics of trance music. The creative use of sound design and general choice of spartan aesthetics, albeit executed using acoustic instruments, emphasize styles club-inclined and tasteful. The overall effect is cinematic and mesmeric; a sonic documentation of a daydream unraveling.

Although the music is emotionally gripping – defined by a dance-floor drive and a thick cinematic atmosphere – it’s hard not to notice the craftsmanship and the skill level involved in bringing these songs to life. The song “Folding Space,” for example, is based on a pattern in 19/8 that turns around on the offbeat against the quarter note. “Shipol,” on the other hand, is predicated on constantly shifting piano, snare and bass drum accents, which make the song feel as if it were performed in 7/16, and not the standard 4/4 that it is.

When asked to describe their music, the band came up with: “It falls somewhere between T.C. Boyle’s prose and Tarkovsky’s dream-like images.” It makes sense! Because the point is not to wow listeners with technique, but to create an experience via deep affect.