kiln: holo

Debut album by Kiln on vinyl for the first time. Holo by the US-American three-piece Kiln, first released in 1998, is one of those rare records that managed to carve out a niche of its own while also building bridges to variety of genres like Chicago-style post-rock, the ambient mysticism of projects like Rapoon or the music made at the intersection of shoegaze, and electronic music in the late 1990s. Lush textures, subtle rhythms, jazzy inflections, and electronic experimentation seamlessly blend into each other over the course of the eleven tracks. This reissue through the German label Keplar makes the fully revised version, self-released by the group in 2007 under the name Holo [re/lux], available on vinyl for the very first time. Clark Rehberg III had embarked on this mission together with Kevin Hayes and Kirk Marrison in 1993. They had first worked together under the name Fibreforms as a live trio that used treated guitars, kit drums, and tapes of found sound to explore the balance between band composition and recording experiments, while Marrison made heavy use of the Akai S612 sampler as a fabricating strategy with the project Waterwheel. Holo followed up on the trio's debut self-titled EP that had been recorded in the summer of 1996. "That same year, during a lull in our collabs, Kirk began building pieces on a low-memory Mac using an early 8-channel DAW," explains Rehberg. Enchanted by the unprecedented fidelity and energy of those recordings, the three reconvened to build upon them and make more music in that manner. The group worked individually and in pairs for about 18 months while being spread across the United States. Rehberg says that he still hears "a time-stamp of those efforts and the belief that we were creating a special audio experience" when listening back to Holo, a record the band itself chose to revise almost a decade after its initial release. "Ultimately we just felt those pieces needed more impact and we had the tools and ability to make that happen," he explains. 16 years after that and a quarter of a century after it first introduced Kiln as a force to be reckoned with, the remastered version feels indeed timeless. It is both a snapshot of the first extensive album project by a group whose bond is still "diamond strong," as Rehberg puts it, and a record that continues to sound fresh, if not visionary also today. Remaster by Stephan Mathieu. Vinyl cut by LUPO. Cover art by Kirk Marrison and Clark Rehberg III. Poly-lined inners; includes download code; edition of 500.