tones drone and broken bones is the second album from mark scanlon, aka k.a.l, and while i haven’t been paying that much attention to downtempo instrumental hip hop in 2008, this understated set shows definite promise.
throughout the eleven tracks, the mood is predominantly of the dark night, where low slung bass rumbles are set against machine loops (as in real machine noise), layered ambience, and reclaimed snippets of sound.
there are references to noisemongers such as my bloody valentine in the info provided, but fear not, there are not parts of the album where you feel the urge to check your needle for any fluff, as here the sonic detail is crisp and clear.
it’s just that hidden in the corners k.a.l has buried some deep manipulated noise just to keep the listener on a state of high alert.
chill out trip hop this is not.
sometimes the doom laden groove is set against some scratched, treated vocals adding a nice twist to the proceedings. and in fact guest vocalists do drop in on the proceedings from time to time, with the highlight being the intense black hearted bastards featuring someone going by the name harlequinade.
deep-n-disturbing it may at first sound, but when the real world industrial noise backing with fractured vocals and violin samples blend to make ghost beat returns then you know that it wont be too long before someone gets in touch with mark for advise on how to soundtrack their slash-n-burn thriller killer movie.
basically if you have ever picked up anything on the illbient nyc based label, wordsound, then you are going to love this.
more detail : here