At some point, you have to come to terms with the fact that, even if you dedicated your entire life to it, you won't be able to keep up with all of the great music that is being released. You won't even be able to keep up with 10% of it, in fact. And so, we must let go of the "cult of the new" and accept that some albums, and bands, will come to us later on. Thus, I find myself featuring CKRAFT, a band I would have loved to catch as their album, Uncommon Grounds, was being released earlier this January.
What are CKRAFT like? It's quite hard to capture fully but, luckily, I have the opportunity to host an excellent list of influences from Charles Kieny, accordionist/composer. That's right, accordionist. If you scroll further down this list, you'll find Kieny's transcription of a Meshuggah guitar solo to accordion and that actually describes the band better than I can. Intensely progressive but also bone-crushingly rhythmic in that Meshuggah way, CKRAFT truly make music that sounds like itself and nothing much else.
So, strap in and dive into the excellent and varied list that Kieny has prepared for you today. And, while you're reading, make sure to check out Uncommon Grounds; it goes very, very hard.
Charles Kieny (CKRAFT): Hey guys, thanks for featuring CKRAFT today! This assignment is super difficult because there are so many Jazz and Metal projects that I look up to and that influence the way I write music for this band. For the Jazz side I would have liked to quote albums by Kurt Rosenwinkel, or very niche stuff like Shut Up And Dance (Orchestre National de Jazz de Daniel Yvinec & John Hollenbeck), or Sabotage And Celebration by John Escreet, but since this is a Metal outlet, I focused on the Metal side of things instead!
Gojira - The Link (2005)
This must be the album that I love the most, the one that really "locked" me into Metal. The song "Remembrance" is one of the direct inspirations for our song "All You Can Kill.” The song "Indians" is a kind of "shuffle" rhythm, that really left a mark on CKRAFT too!
Primus - Frizzle Fry (1990)
I'm thinking in particular of the songs "Too Many Puppies" and "To Defy The Laws of Tradition", their legendary solo cymbal intros, the grooves of Les Claypool on bass and the completely crazy guitar solos of Larry LaLonde really opened my ears at the time, Primus is a band that sounds avant-garde and wacky but that has enjoyed great popularity in the USA, which makes me say that a large audience is there for modern and avant-garde projects!
KoRn - KoRn (1994)
For their unique groove, the heaviness of their riffs and their execution, the opposite of the very "clean" side that we can have in many Metal bands today. I put KoRn and Primus together because one of CKRAFT's first songs, "Restless Paradise", is a direct nod to the song "Blind" from the album KoRn, and to "To Defy The Laws of Tradition” and “Too Many Puppies” by Primus (check out the cymbal intros!)
Tigran Hamasyan - Red Hail (2009)
Oops, non-metal influence here! I listened to this record a lot as well, I had never heard anything like it before. The sound of the rhythm section by bassist Sam Minaie and drummer Nate Wood combined with the left hand riffs played on piano by Tigran and doubled by guitarist Charles Altura, Ben Wendel's (sax) solos, and Areni Agbabian's (vocal) melodies and textures "on top" of all that... The melodies are borrowed from traditional Armenian melodies, and deeply reached me at that time, and surely influenced me to also want to look for a powerful, ancient and mystical melodic vocabulary to take the "lead" in CKRAFT's compositions. I ended up falling in love with Gregorian chants myself!
Meshuggah - Immutable (2022)
It is absolutely necessary to put a Meshuggah record here because it is the common denominator of CKRAFT. Despite our different influences, it is really the group that everyone agrees on. Let's mention their latest album "Immutable", which bears its title well. They have been evolving in the same direction for 30 years and they are at the top of their art. This is exactly what I want to achieve with CKRAFT. The track “Ligature Marks” reminds me of… the “shuffle” rhythm (again!) and influences our song “Steadfast (in the face of tribulations)”
I transcribed a guitar solo by Fredrik Thordendal from the album The Violent Sleep of Reason to the accordion and you can also hear Fredrik's influence quite clearly in my augmented accordion solo on our track “The Loudest Victim” (around 02:50) from our previous album. We jokingly call it “Thordendacc”!
Opeth - Still Life (1999)
I have always been carried away by the journey in which this album takes the listener into (and that of Ghost Reveries from 2005, too). These must be the most “prog” records in my discography, with 10-minute pieces that link meditative and poetic scenes straight away with very angry riffs, hyper-varied, colorful and creative drumming, superb transitions… The atmosphere of the quietest passages in CKRAFT’s music is hugely Opeth-infused. Another inside-joke of us: when I write big chords for Antoine (our guitarist) with weird fingerings and open strings, we like to call these “Opeth-chords”!
Car Bomb - ’W^W^^W^W’ (2012)
A huge favorite. The title of the album is based on a rhythmic palindrome that repeats itself throughout the first track (“The Sentinel”) in several speeds. This might please your geekiest readers. This approach to conceptual rhythmic composition is quite close to what we find in current jazz, and for example in our track "Misconstruction Of The Universe". If you've never listened to Car Bomb, their album Meta is more finely produced and is perhaps more accessible to start entering their universe but if you're a professional musician or composer I advise to look fairly quickly at ’W^W^^W^W’ in case of a crush on Meta!
Imperial Triumphant - Vile Luxury (2018), remastered/reissued in 2024
A black metal album that begins with a long brass intro, super well orchestrated, that could be confused with Gil Evans! We can also mention the track “Cosmopolis” and its tranquil Miles Davisian intro, at the first trumpet notes one could say that they are about to play an arrangement of a well-known standard from a Thelonious Monk song! It is only around 2 minutes that chaos arrives. Thanks to my friend Laurent David who introduced us on stage with his trio KILTER, I got to know Imperial Triumphant’s drummer Kenny Grohowski well, and had the opportunity to play “Cosmopolis” live with Imperial Triumphant during a date in Paris, a memory that is very dear to me!
In 2023 after seeing Imperial Triumphant play the song “Tower of Glory, City of Shame” live (from their album Spirit Of Ecstasy), which features a huge accelerando towards the end of the song and ends in a chaotic climax, I went home and immediately started writing our song “Bring Forth The Imperial Ghost”, which also starts with a huge accelerando!