Sun Dog by Kabas
When Kabas first left its mark on the Belgian music scene with Abel (2016), nothing could have prepared you for where they would find themselves nearly one decade later. Not that the quartet needed extreme makeovers or abrupt stylistic switches. On the contrary, every step Thijs Troch, Jan Daelman, Nils Vermeulen and Elias Devoldere have taken since their first debut feels like a logical next one. This is not the sound of calculation or imposed transformation, but one of a close-knit combination of individuals succeeding in re-inventing themselves.
Double album Negen / Live at SMUP (2018) confirmed that Kabas was much more than a side-project for extremely busy musicians (at one time, they must have been involved in at least two dozen bands or projects at the same time), while Eugénie (2020) was a limited release with a maximal impact. Their intimate portraits were as free as they were intricate, with a new, delicate kind of musical poetry instilling the band’s approach.
On the fourth album Sun Dog, the quartet retains its attention to detail and its fondness of rudimentary ingredients, but explores fresh territory, expanding its instrumentation and disbanding the strictly acoustic. Perhaps this is due to several of the members starting new adventures the past few years. Devoldere successfully delved into contemporary pop music, while Troch and Vermeulen dabbled with new instruments (banjo, guitar, electronics) that now also find their way into Sun Dog.
The three-part album feels like a minimalist, repetitive suite. Sounds appear, get repeated and dissolve. Different constellations pop up, an ambient-like mass of sound keeps transforming. It’s audiocinema with basic, strong ideas. Flurries of flute take on a ghostly allure when combined with a slow, but steady bass pulse, while shimmering cymbals and humming keyboards create an atmosphere hovering between detachment and familiarity. It is hard to separate the three parts from each other, as each one feeds off what came before, with an introverted silent dance leading to a more pastoral vibe touching on folk territory leading to the propulsive last part.
With a rotating drum pattern and twinkling electronics, it resembles a kind of sparse Kosmische Musik aiming for both outer space and exotic territory, while it makes perfect sense for a banjo to be included as well. Perhaps that is what turns Sun Dog ultimately into such a success: the band not only elaborates on its instrumentation and its stylistic whereabouts, but does so while installing a vision that can bend any idea and instrument to its own will and logic.
As such, Sun Dog is that most valuable thing: a world in and of itself.
(text by Guy Peters)
Credits
Jan Daelman - flute, dizi, percussion
Elias Devoldere - drums, percussion, electric and acoustic guitars
Thijs Troch - synthesizers, banjo, acoustic guitar, piano
Nils Vermeulen - double and electric bass, banjo
Recorded by Peter Desmedt at Studio Ledeberg, Ghent
Mixed by Dijf Sanders
Mastered by Lieven van Pée
Sleeve by Rutger Zuydervelt
TINKE003
Troika <3
2025
