KYO - "AKTUEL MUSIK" LP

'Aktuel Musik' is the second release from Kyo, a duet of Hannes Norrvide and Frederik Valentin. Norrvide is best known as the protagonist of synth trio Lust For Youth, though his recent solo techno productions under the guise of Norin have also been met with critical praise. Together with Danish music's enfant terrible, Valentin, whose musical history is as difficult to trace as it is to comprehend, Kyo is a project nourished by the orbit of two individuals around impassioned collectives. 

Following on from their Posh Isolation debut, 'Potentiel Musik,' 'Aktuel Musik' presents eight pieces of emotive and luminesced experimentation. Utilising electronics, acoustic motifs, and aching instrumentation for—most prominently—woodwind and piano, Kyo softly unfold the structures that bind their work to the many genres being addressed. Romantic synth lines submerge free jazz drumming, playfully scattering an appeal to the cerebral in the sensuous. The most brilliant aspect of this lies in one of the record's most pointed qualities: the incredibly subtle use of dissonance, which compresses the enveloping sense of introspection in 'Aktuel Musik' into diamond form. The whispered field recordings corral the moments of listless instrumentation into snapshots of a cosmic metropolis. This is most keenly felt in the orchestral swells that fall away to reveal a soloist on a decaying pedestal, improvising their fate. These acts are invariably swept into dazzling marches that propel 'Aktuel Musik' with the gentle force of wide-eyed exploration. 

Kyo's 'Aktuel Musik' carries the listener away with finesse, but always with the wit to withhold the destination. If 'aktuel music' is 'current music,' then what one may behold in Kyo's work is a new future. The present is beautiful.