Rhyton - Kykeon

9.0 - USA - 2014

Absolutely thrilling space rock with an ancient, Eastern Mediterranean twist. Rhyton are a Brooklyn-based trio named after a type of Ancient Greek drinking vessel who are primarily known for improvised rock that injects an ancient past into a spacey future. Can you get to that? And yet on this album, the improvisation is spared in favour of tight arrangements. And how tight they are! "Guitarist" Dave Shuford plays all sorts of stringed instruments from guitar to bouzouki to electic saz, and the dense interplay between these varied sounds drives the tunes here. Jimy SeiTang and Rob Smith provide an excellent rhythm section that keeps the grooves rocking. The six tunes here are all excellent. "Sirens In Babylon" starts off with a rather horrible noise, but a quick-paced, vaguely ethnic groove soon emerges, one that is redolent of a post-rock version of Lloyd Miller's experiments in merging Western jazz with Eastern forms. Album highlight "Pannychis" starts out with almost country-sounding light funk vamp that soon mutates into something much more mystical. Dig it.