KiNo - Map of the Universe

Kino - Vainglorious

Kino - Wont Do

It’s often said of a great novel that the entirety of the story is contained within the first page, or similarly in a film, that the whole of the conflict is seen in the opening images.  Many albums have similar hopes for their first song.  On his delightful new record Map of the Universe, Kino achieves that effect with “Come and See the Pretty Chaos,” a song that serves as a harbinger of what follows in ways both sonic and conceptual.  After an opening drum flourish, the song soon builds up layers of keys and guitars that somehow end up feeling mellow and strained at the same time, a perfect nest for Kino’s blare-then-whisper vocal style.

Map of the Universe, as its name implies, is an ambitious record, a record with a wide range and big ideas, seen in titles like “Bequeath Me the World” and “Vainglorious” and in Kino’s plan to produce a feature length film and book to accompany the record, reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s album and movie The Wall, which many parts of Map of the Universe sound like.  The similarity can be attributed to producer Jeff Blenkinsopp, who toured with Pink Floyd as a keyboard tech and is said to have once rebuilt David Gilmour’s pedal board.  Kino and Blenkinsopp craft this album’s richly textured soundscape using all analog (read: real) instruments, a noble accomplishment in this digital age.

Kino’s grand vision has yielded an album that is utterly listenable and not at all pompous despite its grandiosity.  The end result is an album that is satisfying on the first listen, and then the second, and then the third. It will be interesting to see if Kino’s feat can be duplicated in whatever other form of media eventually complete his universal map.

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