It’s been a good while since I’ve listened to Kevin Kastning’s
music for a long yet overdue time. Well it’s time for me to get back on the
horse to ride again to see what I was missing from the man himself. And this
time his tenth collaboration with guitarist Sandor Szabo with the release of
their new album entitled Nograd on the
Greydisc label, shows that he and Sandor have never disappointed me.
Recorded last year in September at the Evangelikus Templom
in Nograd, Hungary for one day on September 22nd, Kevin and Sandor return to
their intensive roots once more. Between Kastning’s 12-string extended and
12-string alto guitars along with Szabo’s classical and 16-string guitar, you
can never tell who is going to roll the dice and take a turn to decide who will
win the race.
There are 14 pieces on this album that Kevin and Sandor
composed from scratch. They wanted to extend the wider arrangements that go
beyond the classical, experimental, neo-classical, and flamenco realms. But
adding a little twist of lemon, you can never tell what the duo would think of
next.
Adding the tension by creating these dangerous puzzle maps
for the listener to walk through step by step, there are times that they
combined the elements of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Lubos Fiser, Zdenek Liska,
Gyorgy Ligeti, King Crimson, and Ottmar Liebert rolled into one. And some of
these compositions can make you walk through the paintings of Jackson Pollock
or walk through these spiral staircases that can take you into unknown
locations.
Nograd is really a
big challenge for me. And I always like to see bands and artists like Kevin
Kastning always taking those risks by pushing the envelope even more. Now it’s
been five years since hearing his album Otherworld
back in 2015, again as I’ve mentioned earlier, Kastning has never, ever
disappointed me. And now it is time to pull both the curtains back and explore
the world of Kevin Kastning and Sandor Szabo’s Nograd.
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