Kevin Kastning and Mark Wingfield - The Line to Three

As I’ve mentioned in my 2017 introduction of my review of Kevin Kastning’s A Connection of Secrets, It’s been a good while since I’ve listened to Kastning’s music. It’s been way overdue and I figured it’s about time to go back and find out what I was missing. Since 2011’s I Walked into the Silver Darkness, I believe and I might be wrong this is, it is their sixth collaboration that Kevin has worked with Mark Wingfield. The combination between the two of them are a perfect team, and an amazing duo.

Recorded in over three days last year at Studio Traumwald in Northern Massachusetts in February while mixed and mastered in the U.K. at Heron Island Studio, the soundscapes on The Line to Three, released on the Greydisc label, gives Mark the creation he does by doing these deep, immersive sounds that almost made my arm hairs go up. He can make his guitar go through these chilling scenarios.

I almost had this feeling that he's tipping his hat to Terje Rypdal as if he’s watching Wingfield doing these component ideas while Kastning plays not only just the 30-string contra-alto guitar and the 15-string extended classical guitar, but playing some of the most menacing piano chords both high and low. And some of the booming sounds on percussion as if Kevin is making you, the listener, to understand that someone is creeping up behind you or waves crashing at the exact moment.

You can imagine yourself being at the Scandinavian mountains at night and you can almost feel the wind breezing and the pins dropping. Kastning and Wingfield setting up the cold, chilling, and freezing vibes of the mysterious whereabouts of being alone in a cabin with only one candle burning bright with no electricity, small amount of food, and the winds hitting really hard. The music really sets the scenario as if there’s no one to help you or rescue you. The only option is survival of the fittest.

Now, this is my second time listening to The Line to Three. It may not be everyone’s suitable taste in music, but with the elements of Avant-Garde, Classical, Droning, and Experimental music, Kevin and Mark kept me going for more to see what they will come up with next.