KONY Lo-fi is everywhere now, and it can be tricky to judge its merits. Too often, intentionally primitive production serves no aesthetic purpose. But on Kony’s quick-and-dirty home-recorded EP Island, lo-fi isn’t a gimmick. With traumatized, detuned guitars and desperate, poetic rants lost in a noisy, crackling mix, this Charlotte band’s brand of hardcore is vulnerable and nihilistic – a far cry from the music’s historical “strength in numbers” idealism. And the red-lined, feedback-overloaded mix on Island may even be the exact flip of the band’s namesake. Remember the problematic Kony film that made the social-media rounds a few months ago? It simplified a complex problem and quickly collapsed in on itself. By contrast, this Kony starts from the point of a collapse – “I fell like a TV that was thrown off a bridge,” as they put it – and delivers pure, crushing existential angst. Kony rages not against the dying of the light, but against the light that never shined. With Barrow, Oddczar, Leaderless, and Historic. $6-$9. 9 p.m. The Milestone.
This article appears in Jun 27 – Jul 3, 2012.
