Ausklang - Kairos

1.Kairos 04:52
2.Time Stands Still 04:28
3.Burning Bridges 03:50
4.Momentum 07:28
5.Yearning 03:58
6.Ventus 05:15
7.Pulsar 06:35
8.Zeitlos 05:15

Kairos is the sophomore album from Berlin trio AUSKLANG, following the monumental, critically-acclaimed Chronos (Past Inside the Present, 2020). Throughout its eight movements, Fabian Koppri, Benjamin Sohn, and Simon Ansing play with concepts of relative time and entropy through a masterful balance of melodic post-rock and layered ambient bliss, adorning an understated frame of guitar, bass, and drums with complex, ever-evolving arrangements, ranging from glitchy electronics to classically inspired orchestrations.
Whereas the ancient Greek chronos indicates linear time, kairos describes critical moments of great potency and meaning. In the context of their compositional process, AUSKLANG employed this idea during the extensive in-studio improvisations from which they drew and expanded upon the most resonant ideas and themes. Title track, “Kairos”, opens the suite with a soft, harmonized flurry, as a supernova of spacious percussion and lilting tones emerges, draws back, and redoubles with arpeggiated synths and pensive guitars. Its final minute reaches a buzzing, thrashing crescendo, showing the full range of the trio’s dynamics as they move seamlessly from restraint into cathartic release.
“Time Stands Still” places vigorous, brushed drums under a panoramic interplay of plucks and keys, evoking an immense vista of greens and greys – the very kind of passage, in keeping with the album’s theme, where everything collapses into a singular focus. “Momentum” conveys churchlike reverence with shifting, sun-shaft warmth, as textures of varying grit and grace roll across the stereo spectrum. Here, AUSKLANG demonstrate a flair for sustaining and releasing tension through subtle means, displaying full control of the sonic environment, as the piece blossoms into a rapturous roar before sleeking away into a shadow.