The Russian experimental label Klammklang goes international with the release of Vital Attachments from the UK sound/art collective Katz Mulk. The new digital full-length is also available as a limited edition “ocean blue” cassette with a graphic score from the artist Andrea Kearney. A record of the group’s 2019 commissions for the Counterflows and Experimentica festivals, the collective combines sound, vocals, movement, and sculpture into bewildering but palpable art experiences that invite new perspectives.
The visual score instructs “look at the space from a low angle and feel the floor.” It appears those words are directed to the performers, but they might be just as valid for the spectator, or in the case of Vital Attachments, the listener. While familiar rhythmic elements and sound tropes offer a leg to stand on or even dance on, the Katz Mulk experience continually subverts our vertical orientation, offering in its place the horizontal as a new location for the communal. Meanwhile, an echoing blizzard of vocals deconstructs the experience into philosophical quicksand demanding surrender to the supine as the unfamiliar becomes common ground (down).
