Kiwanoid — Vanatühi

While nothing and nothingness are often represented by blank or negative spaces, Kiwanoid (KIWA) has chosen to utilize many different electronic/tech approaches to represent "nothing" with Vanatühi.

With over two decades immersed in electronica, this artist has made a name for himself by blending different media together for his works, and this latest album is no exception. The old computer systems and glitchy sound palette come together abruptly but purposefully to create a very textured sonic work. Although each song is "nothing" in a different language, the music here is anything but; it is textured, diverse, and intriguing.

Built from the ground up with tools already either outdated or built to sound deteriorated, Vanatühi brings warmth through the familiarity of glitchy, lo-fi sounds within an atmosphere of urgency and near chaos. Utilizing the theme of "nothing," KIWA is able to craft his pieces with pretty much any style or construction he desires, and building the songs from the same material will help to reinforce their interconnectivity, despite how far apart they can grow through this process. This may be harder to see when just listening to one or two tracks, but can be heard a bit more when the whole album is played all the way through. The construction of the songs is interesting, sort of many sounds placed together and seeing which sticks. I get a very "paste" or "plaster" feel from this, like how stucco looks, with each separate peak or valley being unique to the construction. This definitely adds a roughness to the overall sound, which is good, but also has the possibility of keeping the listener at a distance. While there is an overall sound here that is achieved through using the same building blocks, the common thread linking these tracks is pretty light and the album itself ultimately sounds like twenty tracks recorded at different times, collected because they have similar sounds. This is fine, don't get me wrong, but doesn't really sound like a concept album to me. 

Vanatühi is a glitchy, electronic exercise in lo-fi, techno construction, with its theme based in "nothing." It is interesting on the surface and the sounds are engaging, but overall it doesn't seem to fully connect to its goals and seems ultimately like a sum of its parts. With that, though, it is still very listenable and some of the tracks offer up interesting looks at song construction and sonic interaction. It is frenetic, which helps move the songs along, but I think this attachment to chaos and glitch is what keeps Vanatühi from reaching its highest of highs. To find out more