With Hubardo Kayo Dot made its biggest record: a double album of almost 100 minutes, paid for by the people who pre-ordered it. Released in late August 2013, it marked the band’s tenth anniversary.

The short version

The album was first released as a digital download for pre-order customers at the end of August 2013, through Toby Driver’s own Ice Level Music, and the project was funded through Bandcamp pre-orders. A limited three-LP set followed on Ice Level Music (ILM-006), and The Flenser reissued the album in 2017. Driver sings and plays bass, synthesizer, piano, organ and percussion, with Terran Olson and Daniel Means on woodwinds, Tim Byrnes on trumpet and horn, Mia Matsumiya on violin and Kim Abrams on drums. Driver and Randall Dunn produced it. Eleven tracks run to 98 minutes and 50 seconds.

A lamp, a book and a lot of musicians

The album was recorded in Seattle in spring 2013 with Dunn, who also engineered, mixed and designed synth sounds; Jason Ward mastered it at Chicago Mastering Service. The title is an Enochian word meaning lamp or lantern. Jason Byron, the band’s lyricist since the beginning, wrote the words and a 40-page book, “The Sword of Satan”, which tells the story behind the album and was packed with the vinyl edition. Jessika Kenney and BC Campbell add backing vocals.

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The songs

The first disc opens with “The Black Stone” (10:38), on which Byron himself sings, and runs through “Crown-in-the-Muck”, “Thief”, “Vision Adjustment to Another Wavelength”, “Zlida Caosgi (To Water the Earth)” and “The First Matter (Saturn in the Guise of Sadness)”. The second disc begins with “The Second Operation (Lunar Water)” (13:18), includes “Floodgate”, where Olson plays a synth solo, and ends with “The Wait of the World”, the longest track at 14:22. There is no title track.

Reception and legacy

Sputnikmusic ranked it the fourth best album of 2013 and heard in it an echo of the chamber-metal approach of “Choirs of the Eye”. ContactMusic gave it 9 out of 10, and By-Volume scored it 9.5, calling it a “rare and engrossing experience”. The three-LP pressing of 200 copies sold out immediately.

Where it fits

On my Kayo Dot page this is the record I suggest as a second step after the debut. It follows “Gamma Knife” (2012), the first self-released album, and comes before “Coffins on Io” (2014), released by The Flenser.

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