Metro Pulse/Music/Kinski

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What:
Kinski

When:
Tuesday, April 15, 9 p.m.

Where:
The Pilot Light

Cost:
$6

Kinski rides the wave of noisy, instrumental rock, but puts its own twist on it

by Matthew Everett

Seattle's not what it used to be. Ten years ago, the city was the unofficial headquarters for the exploding alternative music scene. Now Seattle's just another local scene, and not necessarily a very important one. But Chris Martin, guitarist for the Seattle drone-rock band Kinski, says he likes it better now.

"It's pretty scattered," says Martin, who moved to the Northwest from Denver in 1990, just in time for grunge's big break and an influx of carpet-bagging hard rock bands. "There are still a lot of garage rock bands, but it's way more open than it was then. It's way more diverse, with a lot of different things than just heavy rock."

One holdover from those days, though, is the Sub Pop label, which released Kinski's third full-length album, Airs Above Your Station, in January.

"We didn't have a label, so we stretched out the recording for four months," Martin says. "[Sub Pop] got in touch with us, said, 'Hey, can we talk?' They knew us, from seeing us play in Seattle, and when we finished the record we sent it to them."

While the financial support and industry clout of Sub Pop will help Kinski get more attention than they might have otherwise (like their recent performance at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas), the extra time in the studio is the biggest difference so far for the band. Their music is patient and precise, building simple riffs into heavy, complicated washes of noise, similar to other recent instrumental bands like Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Their first two records—Space Launch for Frenchie (1999) and Be gentle With the Warm Turtle (2001)—were recorded in a hurry, with arrangements made and remade in the studio.

"Our second album was recorded in 10 days straight," Martin says. "It was mostly live, with some guitar overdubs. This way it's a little more intricate."

The band formed in 1995 when Martin and bassist Lucy Atkinson hooked up with drummer Dave Weeks. Martin and Weeks had played in a few bands before, mostly "Replacements, singer/songwriter stuff," but none of them had ever pursued rock 'n' roll as a career. The band's sound became more fully formed when guitarist Matthew Reid Schwartz joined in 1999.

Schwartz's second guitar didn't just add another dynamic to Kinski; it also added to the band's volume. "I could sample a part and then play over the top of it. But it doesn't have the same impact," Martin says. "Matthew's an integral part of the band, as opposed to just a second guitarist. He plays flute, too. He's definitely adding a completely different side that wasn't there before."

Kinski's live shows, like Mogwai's, are notoriously loud. Martin's aware of the decibel level, and wants to keep it reasonable.

"I've seen Mogwai in the last couple of years, and the volume's just become unbearable," he says. "We definitely never want to cross that line. But there's some stuff we do—harmonics stuff, or having all the strings tuned to the same note—that it's impossible to do at a lower volume. We almost have to be that loud for it to have the impact that it has."

Critics have, somehow, tagged Kinski as a "noise" band. They're definitely loud, even on record, but the Sonic Youth comparisons don't really apply. The tail ends of a few songs on Airs Above Your Station reach a high-speed rock 'n' roll fervor, but for the most part the songs are deliberate, moderately paced, and melodic. There's no discord or experimental dissonance.

But even if some of the attention relies too heavily on rock-critic shorthand, Martin's still glad to get it. More newspapers have written about them recently, and more people are coming to their shows than ever before.

"It's been nice," he says. "We're taking it as it comes."

Martin says he has no idea what the next record will be like. They may go back in quickly and record off-the-cuff, or they may spend months in the studio like they did for the latest record. The whole rock career seems to have caught Martin by surprise.

"I don't know. I'd like to go out on tour with a bigger band that I really like," he says. "I'd like to play for even more people. Our next idea, we just want to make a good record more than anything. Basically we're trying not to think about it too much."