Rinne Allen

The music of Athens composer Killick has gone through many phases over the past dozen years or so. He has explored the full range between the traditionally beautiful and the exquisitely brutal. His newest release, however, marks the first time his music is clearly exuberant and joyful. A near-death experience can do that to you.

A little over a year ago, Killick suffered massive internal bleeding due to a duodenal ulcer and his condition was decidedly touch and go. During his recovery, he would begin to compose the music found on his newest album, Exsanguinette (released Sept. 1). “All the music and all the concepts for the music took place after ‘the bleed.’ At that point, I was really just glad to be alive. A big thing was that there was no sense of struggle,” he says. “It all flowed out very organically and almost effortlessly. It felt as if these were ideas whose time had come.”

Killick, who handles guitar, electronics and a few vocals, is joined on this release by Liz Albee on trumpet, conch shell and electronics, Brann Dailor (Mastodon) on drums, vocalist Delene Porter and Larry Ochs (ROVA Saxophone Quartet). The album feels both very highly composed and highly improvisational. In actuality, the former is the truer. Although he didn’t really rely on written charts, Killick simultaneously recorded and conducted during the single session that birthed Exsanguinette. That session lasted a mere four hours, too. “We set up on a Tuesday night and started recording the next day about 12:30 p.m. and were done by 4:30 p.m.,“ says Killick. “It was highly structured. There was a lot of room for the music to take on its own character in the moment. Everyone knew a lot of the parameters. Basically, I created some boundaries, some of which were to be honored and some which could be overstepped.”

When approaching Killick’s music for the first time, though, boundaries aren’t the first thing that comes to mind. Indeed, neither is any sort of structure. But, the easy adjectives of “noise” and “experimental,” while not entirely inapplicable, seem to fall a little shorter when describing Exsanguinette compared to his earlier work. Certainly, Killick messes with forms, but the music here is far more celebratory than destructive. From the saxophone blasts of the lead track, “Uninhibitorrent,” through the heavily processed creek water samples and conch-shell solos of “Esteempunk” to the tenderness of “Mr. Woodson,” the album is all of a piece. The entire record is repeated through a series of remixes immediately following the last track. “I think people will find it surprising with regards to what was highlighted in each track,” says Killick. “I don't know if there’s a typical remix approach, but they don’t sound like any I've heard.” His approach to the remixes was completely hands-off as he gave cart blanche to the producers—Jeff McLeod, 247, Kyle Dawkins and IdM Theft Able—who handled them.

The full production of the physical product was a several-months-long affair that was directly tied to both Killick’s recovery period and newfound patience with process. He says, “I was just concentrating on my physical recovery. I didn't know exactly what I was gonna do with [the recordings]. I did the entire layout on the interior. [Athens-based tattoo artist] Watson Atkinson generously did the cover art. I'm really happy because nothing was really rushed.”

It’s not at all necessary to have a familiarity with Killick’s catalog to gain something from Exsanguinette, but it helps. For the curious, though, you’d do just as well beginning here and working your way backward. For his part, Killick seems content that the album is simply out. And for the first time in his recorded history, he has produced a document that doesn’t seem to point to something beyond itself or to a future goal or musical exploration. It’s simply a man’s expression of the exhilaration of being alive. “That fine line between life and death can't really be described,” he says. “I have a very different perspective now on how to interpret things and how to read things. As far as the music, the record, everything… I have no complaints.”

Gordon Lamb