Klang
No Sound Is Heard

LA RECENSIONE

Early August in the city, everything's closed, everyone on vacation, even the Fnac listening point has its shutters down and will reopen on the 20th...
I find myself with this disc in hand, a cardboard package that couldn’t be any more minimal. What to do? As I walk to the checkout, I tell myself for the umpteenth time that maybe I should stop buying albums for their covers. And then, who the hell are these Klang? Donna Matthews... This name rings a bell... but why?

Home. I pull the string of the CD player and from the very first notes I realize I'll never stop buying albums for their covers, because then I end up finding albums like this one, which is exactly what I was in the mood to listen to. For me, finding albums like this, just by instinct, (or by sight and feel) is even more gratifying.

What genre is it? It's lo-fi (how much I love lo-fi!) post-rock. It's new wave, but scaled down, not truly dark, just nicely in the shadows. Joy Division, but much softer, and Cat Power, but much more spartan and washed out.

And Donna Matthews? Well, she was a guitarist in Elastica (a band that dissolved in '99 like a pill in alcohol) and after finding herself, she returned with Isabel Waidner (bass and synth) and Keisuke Hiratsuka (drums) to make some noise, but not too much. Klang-hours, yes, but gentle.

Recorded mostly at home, No Sound Is Heard is a mini album of 9 small tracks, recorded "live" with all the mistakes and imperfections that can happen "but why don't we just leave them in?" they must have thought.
Bleak but not sad enough because, in the end, Hiratsuka's drumming is indeed sparse but also delicate, and Matthews' singing is punk in attitude but gentle in tone, and even the lyrics about anger and dismay are filtered through the typewriter, in lowercase.

It was released in May 2004 by the charmingly named mini-label: BLAST First (petite).

Spare, small, and raw.