Krononaut are Leo Abrahams and Martin France, the former playing guitar and the latter drums. Their first album, released in 2021, featured Matana Roberts and Shahzad Ismaily, and was more evidently a jazz recording. For Krononaut II, the pair have stripped their music and their process right down. The new album was recorded live in the space of a single afternoon, and the final recording has no overdubs. It is a low-key, contemplative set, but the quietness splits slowly apart to reveal deep textures. The live atmosphere is unmistakable.
Krononaut II flips the standard polarities of electronic music. France’s drums are acoustic throughout, but Abrahams guitar is constantly layering and looping, as he mixes his playing live using patches. The guitar therefore becomes an ethereal but machine-like presence, playing future music, while the drums bring messy, expressive tone, fighting to break free. It is a compelling tension, and makes the album impossible to ignore. Although the music is conventionally ‘ambient’, because the balance is not quite what the ear expects it is strangely difficult to switch off or to drift with the flow. Nevertheless, before you know it you’ve listened to all four tracks, forty minutes in total.
Krononaut have talked about taking inspiration from Sufi religious music and from Morton Feldmann, music that uses repetition to explore meaning. This could make their music sound minimalist, but it really isn’t. In fact, the slow tempos across the album open up vast space around the music, which Abrahams and France fill with a rich variety of sounds. The tones are constantly shifting across the soundscapes of Krononaut II, from radio beacon pops and pings on ‘Mirage’, to the reverberating bass drum and the shimmer and chime of ‘PGC 20513’. Repetition is part of the palette but it is often disguised, an echo of something familiar the listener cannot quite place. The record opens up world upon world, a multi-verse described in sound from just two instruments.
Krononaut II is not background music but demands full attention and total immersion. The experience of listening is like being in the studio, and in the moment. It is quite an achievement, an album that casts aside time and place and leads us into the inner realms, places that are both calm and fizzing with life.
