Towards the end of 2022 events that were personally cataclysmic and life-changing saw me not only put my reviewing on indefinite hiatus, but withdrawing from music completely. While I did return to listening to music again eventually (inevitably, some might say), I doubted I’d ever return to writing about it. It seems appropriate then that it is an album that opens with a track named for a globally cataclysmic and life-changing event that is the one that has drawn me back. The track is Chicxulub, the album is Shaping the Chaos, and the band are post-rockers IKITAN. If a picture paints a thousand words, IKITAN’s music paints a thousand pictures. Instrumental the band may be, but if their music doesn’t conjure up imagery in your head, you may wish to check you still have a pulse.
In order that those who don’t like to read more than a précis can move on (as I have a tendency to be verbose), I’m reminded of German post rock bands such as My Sleeping Karma and Long Distance Calling, but with hints of alternative rock such as Tool and Alice In Chains sneaking in. I believe I used the phrase, “if Tool were a post rock band” when I first tried to put into words how IKITAN’s music sounds to me. That still works here. So if that sounds like your thing, then give this album a spin. For the rest of you (masochists, the lot of you!), here are my many words that can’t begin to describe even one picture of the thousand that IKITAN paint on Shaping the Chaos.
Let’s begin at the beginning, or perhaps before it, because before there was a beginning there was chaos. Chaos, that almost paradoxical, primordial, temporal infinity. Vaguely indefinable, though many ancient scientists offered their attempts. In more modern mathematical and scientific parlance, chaos theory finds the underlying patterns and repetition in apparent randomness. In either case chaos, though difficult to predict with any accuracy is somewhat deterministic, or as old Anaximander might have said, everything comes from chaos and must by nature return to chaos. In the meantime, IKITAN have taken it upon themselves to shape that chaos quite marvellously.
As aforementioned, things kick off with a short sharp shock. Along with the final track, Chicxulab doesn’t mess about, telling its story in just over two minutes. Yet the amount of drama, suspense and tension in those short two minutes is incredible. The first twelve seconds of a lone guitar are almost gentle before the bass and drums kick in emphatically – in what is possibly one of my favourite moments of the entire album! What a start! There is a tangible sense of something wicked this way coming. We can see it coming. We know it’s coming. But there’s nothing we can do about it. And the almost sudden silence at the end is somehow both ominous and terrifying. This is an amazing opening number. The Chicxulab Crater marks the impact of the asteroid that was the primary cause of the mass extinction of 75% of plant and animal species on Earth. A two minute piece of music can’t hope to have the same impact, and yet IKITAN manage to do a remarkable job.
Lahar follows, and it’s glorifying sinister and wonderfully misleading, just as lahar can be. When most people think of volcanic flows, I suspect they think of lava but lahar can be equally, if not more, devastating. While they can begin small, and creeping along at a sedate pace, they can easily become larger and deeper and travel at 20-30km/h. There have been lahar that have reached speeds of over 200km/h. Basically we’re talking extremely destructive and deadly. The initial eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 killed only six people, but the resulting lahar flows killed over 1500. My home country of Aotearoa New Zealand might not have volcanoes spurting lava, but lahar is a very real danger from the volcanoes of the North Island, and one of the largest losses of life in the country’s history from a single disaster was as a result of a lahar. IKITAN’s Lahar starts sedately, again with a single instrument before the beat really kicks in, and the temp picks up. The track still isn’t sounding or feeling particularly threatening yet, but this is of course deceiving…
Next up is Darvaza, one of two tracks on the album that were released previously, and which I was initially wondering about when I saw on the track list for Shaping the Chaos. As I noted at the time, the two tracks that made up the Darvaza y Brinicle release both complement and contrast with each other, flowing around and against themselves like a yin yang in music. It didn’t matter which order you listened to them in, one seemed to segue into the other. On Shaping the Chaos, the two are separated, and until I listened to the album, I was unsure if I liked that. But what IKITAN have done is nothing short of amazing (more astonishing than Dream Theater). The album is structured in an almost perfectly palindromic way. (Not so literally as Ottone Pesante’s DoomooD, but as close as I’ve come across since.) Just check out the track lengths – and it’s not just in the length, but their shape and character. Everything is reflected. Everything comes from chaos, and to chaos returns.
But before we reach the centre point, we have Sailing Stones, presumably named after the phenomenon where rocks move along a smooth surface without any obvious intervention – most famously (and appropriately for IKITAN and their proclivity towards extremes) in Death Valley. But then, IKITAN while they do dwell on the more interesting places and phenomena on our planet, also like to look at the mythology that can sometimes intertwine with this. The band is after all names after the supposed god of sound from stones. And the sound from these Sailing Stones sounds far more epic than a geological phenomenon, to my ears more reminiscent of the clashing rocks and wandering rocks of Greek mythology (the Symplegades and Planctae). The sailing stones of Death Valley (and other similar valleys) move quietly and peacefully. The Sailing Stones of IKITAN are full of danger and drama. Only heroes such as Jason and Odysseus managed to navigate safely between the clashing and wandering rocks – and even then, only with divine help.
This is either very clever, or me simply reading to much into it – but I did say that IKITAN’s music paints a thousand pictures (of a thousand words each) in my mind. Across the mythologies of various cultures, combat myths exist between a culture hero (usually semi-divine) and a chaos monster (often a serpent). These combat myths are usually in the context of creation (and often by destruction), and include what can only be described as shaping of the chaos. In Sliding Stones, while there is a physical phenomenon that fits the description, the music sounds far more like the soundtrack to a combat myth. And in keeping with the palindromic nature of Shaping the Chaos, IKITAN make a nod to the combat myth again (if only to my ears) after Natron.
But Natron. Oh Natron! What a centrepiece! What a masterpiece! At over 10 minutes long, it is the lengthiest number on the album, but it needs it and not a second is wasted. For the first time, IKITAN bring in additional musicians to enhance and augment their vision, and wow – just wow! Roberto Izzo on violin, especially, takes Natron to the next level (and it would have been amazing without the violin, which is simply the icing on an already mouth-wateringly delicious cake). Natron is of course the African lake with a striking colourisation (blood red) and inhospitable nature. The lake’s waters are caustic (with a pH level similar to ammonia) and the high levels of sodium carbonates in it leads to a calcified petrification of wildlife that dies near it, creating a natural sort of mummification. The music is similarly petrifying in that (for me, at least) it’s impossible to do anything but listen when this track is playing.
I am struck still for its duration, deliriously catatonic until Bung Fai Phaya Nak snaps me back to reality.
Bung Fai Phaya Nak explosively bursts into action like the Naga fireballs on the Mekong River it is named for. The music and the fireballs rise in the air until they vanish, and are followed by another. The music overlaps with itself, just as the rising of the fireballs overlaps. Originally called ghost lights, Bung Fai Phaya Nak is, between bursts of frantic energy, suitably ghostly. The peaks and valleys of this track are mesmerising, just as I’m sure the Naga fireballs would be in the night sky. I know mentioned that this track makes a nod to the combat myths of creation from chaos, but I acknowledge this is my inference rather than anything implied. For the Naga do not appear in any combat myth (to my knowledge), but are venerated as both semi-divine culture heroes and serpentine chaos monsters. So even if only serendipitous, it’s a nice callback in my mind. And it’s a nice number which leads very nicely into Brinicle.
Brinicle is of course the other of two tracks that have been previously released, but have been integrated perfectly into this new album. What Darvaza and Brinicle did as a pair is simply expanded to album length. Just as with those two tracks, Shaping the Chaos is an album full of imagery of fire and water, and if I may quote myself from my review of Darvaza y Brinicle, “rather than being in opposition to each other, IKITAN concentrate on their points of similarly, rather than differences. IKITAN have very successfully represented two different yet complementary natural phenomena in music – in their own words, both devastating and powerful, but ethereal and dream-like at the same time.”
After the brutal yet beautiful heaviness of Brinicle, Blood Falls offers some much needed respite. The connotations of the name of Blood Falls belies the beauty of them, and so is also the case for the music of this track. If each track has its opposite on this album, then Blood Falls must be pared with Lahar. Lahar comes from the fire of the earth, but without its appearance, while Blood Falls comes from the water, but with a fiery appearance. Each track is somewhat deceptive, but in opposite manners. Again, I can only say that these are pictures I see when I listen to the album. I’m extending Barthes death of the author beyond words. Without lyrical content, I present to you the death of IKITAN.
There’s only one track left, and suitably it’s the song of a solo whale – the so called loneliest whale on Earth. The call of 52 Blue (the 52Hz Whale) is the only one of its kind detected anywhere and there is only one such source per season. First detected in 1989, it’s call has been detected almost every year since. It’s continued survival implies it is probably healthy, despite having remained alone all these years. Like the opening track, 52Hz Whale is short, but that’s about where the similarities end. Where Chicxulub was full of imminent menace, 52Hz is calm and content. While you might expect it to be melancholic, for the most part it feels positive. But while both opening and closing numbers end in silence, Chicxulub ends far more abruptly (as one might expect for a meteor impact), while 52Hz Whale fades out in a way that seems almost more horrifying than the mass extinction of Chicxulub. The death of one is a tragedy, while the death of millions is just a statistic?
(On a more positive note, and to link back to the Chicxulub impact, while the extinction event saw 75% of the Earth’s species vanish, it also provided evolutionary opportunities in its wake. Mammals, in particular, fared well with one of the new forms of mammal that evolved being the whale. An end is a beginning, as a beginning is an end. From chaos we come, and to chaos we return.)
Regardless of what you hear when you listen to Shaping the Chaos from IKITAN (and as I doubt what I hear is what IKITAN intended, so I’m sure you’ll hear different things than I did), I can’t imagine you not being able to see what you hear – so vivid is the playing of Luca, Frik Et and Enrico. And as a final note, talking about vivid, I can’t not mention the artwork of Luca Marcenaro. I still haven’t decided whether I prefer his artwork for this album or 2020’s (Twenty-Twenty), but both are phenomenal, and perfectly capture the spirit of IKITAN’s music, and the duality between the phenomena of nature and mythology.
TRACK LISTING
01. Chicxulub (2:19)
02. Lahar (5:30)
03. Darvaza (6:30)
04. Sailing Stones (6:15)
05. Natron (10:26)
06. Bung Fai Phaya Nak (6:52)
07. Brinicle (7:04)
08. Blood Falls (5:27)
09. 52Hz Whale (2:11)
Total Time – 52:32
MUSICIANS
Luca Nasciuti – Guitars
Frik Et – Bass
Enrico Meloni – Drums, Cowbell
~ With:
Olmo Manzano – Percussion (5)
Roberto Izzo – Violin (5)
ADDITIONAL INFO
Record Label: Independent
Country of Origin: Italy
Date of Release: 7th March 2025
