BOOK OF KNOTS: Book Of Knots

Book Of Knots

Book Of Knots

© 2004 Book Of Knots (656605985329)

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notes

The four core members of The Book Of Knots -- Joel Hamilton, Tony Maimone, Matthias Bossi, and Carla Kihlstedt -- are all multi-instumentalists who've played on (or with), produced, or engineered enough bands and records to fill the entire reverse side of this page. So we did. Check it out ...
The band's name alludes to the musical binds that tie these diverse strands together -- a concept echoed by their eponymously titled album debut, The Book Of Knots, issued by Austin, TX-based indie Arclight Records.
"We made this record with no agenda, no ulterior motive, no record deal," explains Hamilton. "We started out with one song about what it's like to grow up in a rotting sea town in Massachusetts -- staring at the ocean when you're seven-years-old, cutting bait on a dock for your first summer job and smelling the chum -- then, and I know it's astonishingly cliched to say, it took on a life of its own and became what we called this 'begrudgingly epic' concept album.
"The first song on the record, 'Scow,' was the first thing we recorded and it set the template: swirling guitars, bombastic dynamics, and using a simple naval chant as a melody. Plus, it was completed -- the basic tracks, the layering, the mixing, everything -- in a single day.
"We did the entire album like that," Hamilton reflects, noting that the process took roughly a year, owing to the four principals' voluminous touring and recording commitments. (For the last four years, Hamilton and Maimone have been partners in the Brooklyn-based Studio G, where The Book Of Knots was recorded, primarily when the studio wasn't being used by such paying clients as Frank Black, Soul Coughing, and all the other alt-rock luminaries listed on their studiogbrooklyn.com Website.)
"I'd known Matthias Bossi for about 10 years," Hamilton continues. "We both grew up as year-rounders on the coast of Massachusetts and we'd been playing together informally ever since he moved to New York. Carla Kihlstedt came in fairly early, after Matthias played her a couple of tracks while they were out on the road when he was playing with Skeleton Key and she was with Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. She came by the studio when they were in town, wound up singing on a song and playing some violin, and became a core member."
Collectively, the four core members play 42 different instruments on The Book Of Knots. "Although I think any one of us are capable of making a solo album," says Hamilton,"one of the fun things about this project was being willing to let people say, 'I've never played a Marxophone before; let me go in there and do it and see if it works.' And sometimes, the quote wrong unquote person for the job wound up playing a simple line that had an honesty to it like a sea chantey, so there would be some painfully naive, sickly sweet melody in the song to go with all the trudging ogres that surround it.
"There was a total lack of premeditated parts," elaborates Hamilton. "It's totally based on layering -- sometimes diametrically opposing parts -- but we refused to be involved in some formless, self-indulgent, inaccessible, avant-bullshit wankfest to hide the fact we can't write a song 'cause there are actual songs here, like 'Boston To Bombay.' We didn't want to put out a fake word -- like in Scrabble -- and then challenge anyone to tell us it wasn't real and it wasn't art.
"The whole concept-album aspect of the record developed because we knew we had to put a face on it, and all those guest appearances grew organically out of that. For example, we said, 'It's too bad that we don't have a real ship's captain to talk about having to eat one of his partners on the boat out of starvation, but that Welsh brogue of Jon Langford's could sound amazing here.'
So we called him -- he's an old friend; Tony played with him in the Mekons -- and he came in and did 'Captain's Cup.' Then he threw down this brilliant poem about the sea, 'Back On Dry Land' and we built this sort of Radiohead meets the Clash track around it."
Aside from Langford, the album's guest list stretches from guitarists Norman Westberg and Matthew Waugh and vocalists Megan Reilly, Alice Lee, and the Rev. Vince Anderson to violinist Catherine Oberg, banjoist Brandon Seabrook, percussionist Jason Mills, and bassist Dave Curran.
"All of those people are our friends, people to whom we have a actual personal connection," observes Hamilton. "It wasn't like, 'Let's call this fabulous cello player to join our incredible star-studded gala.'
"Even though each song was its own little island, we wanted each one of them all to tell a story that was part of a larger story with a beginning, middle, and end -- rather than just be a collection of singles that didn't say anything. We wanted to create a certain spatial movement with an ebb and flow. We didn't want to just copy the first thing we did and put a different title on it and repeat that ad nauseum. In that sense, The Book Of Knots was definitely our reaction to the current state of music."
Considering that the lyrics to "Assistance" are taken entirely from semaphore code, "Tugboat" is sung from the point of view of its titular subject, and "Frank's Funeral" is a retelling of Hamilton's uncle's Viking-style cremation at sea, only serves to underline that last statement.
Meanwhile, the music mirrors the narrative's maritime concerns. Witness the cymbals that crash like waves throughout "Crumble," the calm before the firestorm structure of "Pearl Harbor," the burly dockworkers' chant reflected in the crushing guitar riff that humorously marries title and form in "Hook," and the eerie, effects-laden soundscapes of the claustrophobic "40 Degrees" and the gentle eddies of "Fastenings," the album's reflective closing track. "That was all a conscious decision," says Hamilton. "Sometimes we're intentionally trying to create the sense of confusion of being in a storm or fog, but mostly we were trying to sound like mutants wearing prom dresses or a hobo with all these missing teeth holding up a flower. We were trying to find the element of beauty in the midst of all this disgusting decay, so that people would really root for this broken-down old town that smells like rotting docks and dead fish, rather than coming off like a bunch of musicians saying, 'now let's play some weird chords.'
"The main thing about this album is that you can't just play one song and think you've heard the whole thing. People who've heard it say everything from 'that sounds like Pink Floyd' to 'that sounds like the Swans,' but that has more to do with their own frame of musical references."
"Obviously, sea stories have been part of the artistic language since people first built boats, but after we've taken you on this particular journey, we leave your mind free to ponder what you've just heard -- as the last song says, 'free to drift ... free to drift.'"
Nautical, but nice. That's The Book Of Knots.

reviews

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  • This is one of my favorites!
    author: Charles Wilson

    This record has become one of my favorite rock records of the last 20 years. The ambitious, swirling guitars.... the challenging harmonic structure all add up to something that simply stands on its own. Nothing sounds like the Book Of Knots! If you like heavy music, but you are tired of formula based "rock by numbers" then this should be in your collection. Really refreshing... Like the first time I heard the melvins, but with quieter, creepy parts that give me the chills every time....

  • Absolutely great
    author: Luke d'Araceno

    I love this album. Imagine Sleepytime GM, Tin Hat Trio, 5UU's, and CocoRosie playing together on a wide range of acoustic and electric instruments.

  • Great Cocept Cd.
    author: www.GreatIndieMusic.com

    Book of Knots do a great job on this concept cd. Keep up the good work!

  • Comes with a map and a seafarer’s glossary, to help you get your bearings.
    author: John Payne (LA Weekly)

    The Book of Knots (Arclight) Sailing away, altering our reality, is a basic human impulse, like eating and sleeping and watching TV. Inside your head (and indeed out), you want to be somewhere else. Now, these alterna sea chanteys are all somewhat to do with the great big sea and its salty spray, tugboats, dim yellow beams from lighthouses (on a foggy morn), drowning, fish oil smell and damp knit sweaters . . . ahoy there, it’s a concept album by the trio of Joel Hamilton, ex–Pere Ubu/Rocket From the Tombs dude Tony Maimone and Matthias Bossi, heavy friends including John Langford, Carla Kihlstedt, Dave Curran and more. I like the idea of having a central theme upon which to hang a bunch of random stuff, which is what this amounts to. A lot of ideas about let’s say rock-related tonality and texture are cast adrift to bob about on a vast pool of gigantasaurus and super-angular black slabbage, ring-modulated caterwaul scraps tandemizing with plucked acoustic guitars, banshee electric violin, excellent unsettling noise and murmurings and a bit of whistling. Comes with a map and a seafarer’s glossary, to help you get your bearings.

  • FILE UNDER: ANCIENT MARINERS, RIMES OF
    author: Antero Garcia

    The Book of Knots self-titled Arclight Tying together noise, pop craft and wreckage rescued from the bottom of the ocean, the Book of Knots—not so much a band as a collection of dear old punk rock fogies Joel Hamilton, Matthias Bossi, Carla Kihlstedt and Tony Maimone—set sail on a mesmerizing nautical voyage. As a concept album, it might seem less than seaworthy—the collected output of several ocean-obsessed jam sessions—but the first track, "Scow," sets the precedent with a lovely hurricane of melody swelling out of an old naval chant. "Frank’s Funeral" mixes Catherine Oberg’s delicate string performance with Megan Reilly’s sultry female cooing and the band’s signature punk bombast to settle on a spooky dirge, a signature moment that’s close to a tamer version of the Mekons, whose leader John Langford performs the lead vocals to "Back on Dry Land." The 12 tracks that map out this Odyssean journey recall the nightmares of the seasick and the hung over—especially the track "Boston to Bombay"—but despite the parade of guests and the more than 40 different instruments (including banjo, shovel, something called a dumbek and something else called a marxophone) that catcall from the fringes, the album never strays off-course. These guys are seasoned sailors—they know how to get where they want to go.

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