kyü

On their debut self-titled album, Sydney duo kyü show an attention to detail well beyond their years, writes LAWSON FLETCHER.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] With tones skimmed off some astral plane and percussion drawn from the earth itself, Alyx Dennison and Freya Berkhout draw these energies together into the sublime vanishing point that is kyü. You’ve heard of neo-tribal, this is literally that: communal rhythms and percussion form the bedding for synths and alien vocal stretches. This Sydney duo take on the universe in their soundscapes through this enigmatic matching of the sterile and the organic, producing an album that is at once vast and pristine, and even almost overwhelming in its celestial grandeur.

Nowhere is this clearer, or the album better, than on the opening suite of three songs – ‘Foreword, Sistar’ and ‘Pixiphony’ – as the harmonious cry, “Can’t we count the stars tonight?”, emerges out of minutes of smoky, nebulous atmospherics: wind chimes, distant chants, often processed through reverse filters. They are vocals that threaten to melt into the heavenly body of the music as they push the stratosphere, establishing a heavy mood for what’s to come. ‘Sistar’ and ‘Pixiphony’ are easily the standout tracks and strikingly similar in their essential features: blissful synth washes, hypnotic floor toms and beats and incessantly beautiful singing, alternating between almost primitive mantras and angelic stretches.

These melodies, drifts and chants draw on a vocal palette the likes of Karin Dreijer Andersson, Kate Bush and even Björk. It’s a kind of pan-ethnic accent that is established, processed, full of affectations and tics. It could sound woeful if it wasn’t so brilliantly executed and controlled. It’s a dissolution of the vernacular in favour of a mystical, universal voice, one that’s only occasionally disrupted by the odd tacky phrase (“Riding the space between carriages/Riding the space between you and me” on ‘Trains’).

“It’s not just an umlaut or a penchant for vocal scribbles that kyü share with Björk.”

And it’s not just an umlaut or a penchant for vocal scribbles that kyü share with Björk. The textures of an album like Vespertine are all over this debut: chimes, glockenspiels and other crystalline elements that flesh out the tracks; liquid beats and organic synthsounds; and majestic, dreamlike effects. Artist comparisons are often flippant or stuffed with veiled contempt, but the connection I’m drawing here is nothing but positive – like the Icelandic master, this duo have already found the ability to create forested sonic otherworlds, and to marshal an overwhelmingly full sound while maintaining a sense of vast open space, searing the whole project with their own unique focus on slow-burn atmospherics and intensely delicate arrangements.

Because even though Dennison and Berkhout have made gestures to a degree of improvisation in the recording of the album, you wouldn’t guess it listening here – nothing sounds like an accident. Sure, it’s shot through with an avant-garde refusal to bend to the rules of conventional songwriting, but this experimentation has been put in service of a keenly realised, exceedingly mature aesthetic. Perhaps it’s the most accomplished aspect of a record that earns itself swathes of odd gratitude in so many respects. Kyü have crafted an emotionally charged, immensely fulfilling debut that is nevertheless stunning in its fragility and exquisite in its attention to detail.

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‘Kyü’ is out now through Popfrenzy.