This one is quite unlike what we've reviewed here in the past, and hopefully we can expect some more, cough, submissions of this caliber. This isn't metal folks, it isn't hardcore, it isn't punk, it isn't noise, it's a little ambient, but in all respects the band's own title for themselves hits it right on the head and beats it into submission. This is dark jazz, and some of the creepiest, most skin-crawling sounds you'll ever hear in the genre. As they indicate on their site, the band was created 'to compose new music for existing silent movies', and they do a damn fine job of it, if by silent films they're talking about anything Murnau thought up or one of Svankmajer's lesser-known silent features from earlier in his career.
The members are impressive alone, let alone in totality, with experience in abstract audiovisual work, hardcore electronics, freejazz trombone, Baroque, shit, these guys read like graduates from schools we're expected to bow down to and most people who read reviews on this site, no offense, would probably think them a bit pretentious at first. But The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble is far from it, and the concept behind this one, which we'll sum up as the piece-by-piece revelation of life's path symbolically along a stairway as it dips into a dark, dank cellar. And if that doesn't do it for you, just listening to pieces of From the Stairwell sure will.
It's almost impossible to fully extrapolate on the amount of structure and form found within this album. Songs like "Giallo" feature a very dark, atmospheric approach to jazz with haunting instrumentation accented by strange blips of outer limits-style electronics and beautiful singing that sounds like it's coming from the basement of an asylum.
Other tracks, such as "Cocaine" feature rather unsettling breaks of structure with reverse chimes, sounds that creak and crawl, and whimpers coming from underneath the bed of a near-death drug addict or perhaps a rape victim. The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble also remove the expected drum patterning you'd find in the usual jazz blah of the modern era, instead relying on a more tribal, separated, trance-inducing separation of sounds in order to create their strange ethereal approach. There really isn't one song that sounds similar to another, though they all have this drunk, staggered sensation to them so From the Stairwell remains stuck together, though in a degraded fashion.
This album also has a wonderful way of playing with your emotions; you're going to feel your mood shift several times, but it rarely breaches the brack surface of melancholy throughout From the Stairwell. If you're feeling sad, you're going to end up severely depressed, if you're happy, the same result. There's also this classic 'noir' element going on here, like an empty and forgotten Mae West wandering along a rain-soaked, puddle-ridden street of discarded cigarettes butts, but man, it's getting hard to come up with clever metaphors to finish this one off!
Suffice to say, The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble is simply an incredible group. This is jazz for the modern era, like really, no fucking joke there. This isn't the kind of stuff NPR would have the guts to play. Rarely do you see a group successfully pull off what they claim their sound is about, there's simply too much skill and talent behind this one for it to fail. You can listen to the full album below, but should you be in a dark mood, it might be best to wait.
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Written by Arkus
