Are you a metal band hell bent for classical credibility? You should give Jessika Kenney a holler. She lent her voice to Sunn O)))’s Monoliths & Dimensions and Wolves In The Throne Room’s Two Hunters and Celestial Lineage, and formerly sang for experimental doom group Asva. Kenney has also worked with experimental musicians with close ties to the metal world, including Eyvind Kang and Oren Ambarchi. She’s also a composer in her own right, and you’re about to find out what she can do without a bunch of dudes in robes.“Pamor” is the fourth track from Atria, her solo debut out on the 24th through Aaron Turner’s (the good Isis, Hydra Head Records, Old Man Gloom, Sumac, etc.) Sige Records, and it is not metal in the slightest. It’s pretty minimalist, composed mainly of delicate cymbals, which she draws ever so slowly over, and her voice. It’s quiet but not soft; sometimes the cymbals make feedback-like blips that squelch any sort of silence. “Pamor” is also quite different from the rest of Atria, which features quite a few gamelan (a traditional form of Indonesian music) pieces. This could be the intro for an extremely slow doom band -- Monarch could make it work -- though it works best on its own. The tension is ever-present yet understated; adding any more layers just wouldn’t work. Earth and Sunn O))) are pretty goddamn minimalist anyway, so if you’re into a less is more set of mind, you’ll be into this. Besides, aren’t you tired of volume by now?
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