Kukl
The Eye

THE REVIEW

THE DARK SIDE OF ICELAND

Forget the cold, yet "domestic" and "welcoming" whiteness of all contemporary Icelandic music, that of Múm, Sigur Rós, and which, at times, even fits into the eclectic musical career of the ice diva par excellence: Bjork (think of the masterpiece "Vespertine," an album of twilights and childish wonders, of crumbling snow and poetry). And it is Bjork herself who is the voice of this album, with KUKL, one of the many bands where she was the vocalist before reaching fame with the Sugarcubes and her solo career, who released two albums: this "The Eye" (1984) and the more challenging, almost theatrical, "Holidays In Europe" (1986). Children of new-wave and punk, KUKL describe their musical universe with rough, yet refined sounds, glimpses of shadows, of hells, and leaps into the void. 

And we were saying to forget the silent beauty of certain Nordic music that is almost whispered and delightful, because this album oozes with sensations that lead to indefinable oblivions, stirred by monsters with huge fangs and invisible creatures. A debut with a bang that disintegrates into eight unpredictable and often naive pieces that remain impressed: from the memorable "Anna" (also unforgettable is the music video where a very young Miss. Birch with a bob cut is adorned like a bride of darkness), a splendid and contagious track, almost tribal in its unsettling organ and drum procession, to the raw and marvelous opening of "Assassin," passing through a nice easy-listening of the sustained "Dismembered" and the irresistible guitar riff that unleashes screams and acid-drenched parallel universes in the beautiful "Seagull," perhaps also dictated by the law of improvisation: free, ancestral music, often devastating and tormented.

A record with the spontaneity and sweetness of a child looking at the world for the first time, despite certain dark abysses it can unleash, as in the playful and joyous "Open The Window And Let The Spirit Fly Free," compelling in its indecision of being hope or despair, lost as it is in the unjustified violently happy euphoria and a pang triggered in the soul like a devastating fury.

Dense and highly inspired, "The Eye" is a record few remember, but certainly impressive and capable of gracefully throwing you into a sonic apocalypse. Driven by moods of every kind and by sensations traveling from one note to the next, it is an album that can always be listened to again with surprise, born from an embrace between purely adolescent discomfort, adulthood, and childlike naivety. Not to be missed, "The Eye" is the scream of an Iceland lost in snow and mist, but not afraid to shout, even whispering, its magical introspections.