Tony Maimone of Pere Ubu, They Might Be Giants, Bob Mould, Frank Black, Lucinda Williams, etc, Carla Kihlstedt of Tin Hat Trio, Tom Waits, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, 2 Foot Yard, and many many more, producer/engineer/guitarist Joel Hamilton (Elvis Costello,unsane,Frank Black,sparklehorse,Shiner, Players Club, etc) and Matthias Bossi of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Skeleton Key, Vic Thrill, etc) are the core members of this project.
Collaborators are including Tom Waits, Mike Patton, David Thomas, Blixa Bargeld, Jon Langford, Carla Bozulich, Norman Westberg(Swans), Dave Curren (Unsane), Megan Reilly, Cat Oberg, Zeena Parkins, etc. Already quite impressive, isn’t it?
And the result – the music – is similarly colourful, gloomy, shape-shifting, flowing and floating “something”. Something charming, hypnotizing or sweet like poison.
The first, self-titled album was recorded from June 2003 to November 2003 by three core band members Joel Hamilton, Matthias Bossi and Tony Maimone at Hamilton and Maimone’s Brooklyn based Studio G. The album morphed organically from a few musicians in the studio recording material they had written with a nautical, narrative, conceptual theme in mind, to a collective of featured artists. The artists on the album are all inter-connected by bands and friendships and circumstance. Over 40 different instruments can be heard on the album while the songs are woven together creating a tale of longing, despair, loneliness, mortality. The narrative is a labyrinth of connections, or knots, tying each segment of the story to the sea.
The artists on the album are all inter-connected by bands and friendships and circumstance. No one was commissioned so much as drawn-in through the circles of connectivity. Well over 40 different instruments can be heard on the album. The songs are woven together creating a tale of longing, despair, loneliness, mortality. The narrative is a labyrinth of connections, or knots, tying each segment of the story to the sea.
The second album entitled “Traineater” bring the New York based quartet of Matthias Bossi, Joel Hamilton, Carla Kihlstedt, and Tony Maimone working with Carla Bozulich, Jon Langford, David Thomas, Mike Watt, and Tom Waits and the result of this chemistry is the speaker-bending doom-rock mixed up with the maximalist orchestral production. The album was released in 2006.
“Garden Of Fainting Stars” was released on 14 June 2011 and beside founding members Matthias Bossi, Joel Hamilton, Carla Kihlstedt, and Tony Maimone featuring artist are Tom Waits, Mike Patton, David Thomas, Blixa Bargeld, Jon Langford, and Carla Bozulich.
Cinematic, surrealist soundscapes populated with symphonic constructions or minimalist-mysterious electro or rock blasts, The Book Of Knots blending everything, heaviness and smoothness, subtle modernism and noise deconstructions, but manage to deliver this “package” of sounds in a quite fluent, smooth, natural flow filled with sparkling, exciting breaks, twists and turns.
This is something absolutely mandatory to listen and beyond the obvious experiment and avant-garde values, well, this remains a quite beautiful listening, and admit it, this is a quite rare combination.
Tracklist:
01. Microgravity
02. Drosophilia Melanogaster (feat. Blixa Bargeld)
03. Moondust Must (feat. Nils Frykdahl and Dawn McCarthy)
04. Lissajous Orbit (feat Aaron Lazar)
05. Garden of Fainting Stars (feat. Elyas Khan)
06. All This Nothing
07. Yeager’s Approach (feat. Mike Watt)
08. Planemo (feat. Mike Patton)
09. Nebula Rasa
10. Obituary For The Future (feat. Trey Spruance)
The Book Of Knots – Official Site
The Book Of Knots @ MySpace
The Book Of Knots @ last.fm
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrR58zzz9KE&w=500&h=305]
