all Kayo Dot songs RANKED and REVIEWED
For listeners old and new: a full dissection and exposition of Toby Driver's longstanding experimental band.
This is the music of things lost, warped, and found once more in shapes no one would have imagined. No single artist embodies the sound of curiosity itself, but Kayo Dot come so close and take that appeal to such extremes, complete with all the dreads and misgivings familiar to the terminally curious, that I’ll be coming back to them for as long as I have ears.
“Kayo Dot was formed after the disbanding of Maudlin of the Well, a mildly acclaimed progressive metal band in late 2002.”
— Wikipedia, doing its best to rile up Kayo Dot fans before even mentioning their music.
Thus the stage is set for a passionate fanbase steeped in hyperbole to leap atop the nearest box and start sermonising the importance of a band that is likely already as well-known and respected as they’ll ever be. Do I need to tell you that Toby Driver is the source, the sauce, and the sorta guy that I associate with New York Art Schools despite the fact that he was educated in Boston and I’ve never been to the Big Apple? That his name is redolent of fully-realised artistic ambitions with influence comparable to Justin Broadrick or Aaron Turner or, or, somebody stop me, ex-label partner John fucking Zorn, I suppose? [Hugh’s note: yes, indeed, see entry #22!!] Need I also mention that longtime former member Mia Matsumiya is supremely fucking handy with a violin, or am I just tracing over webpages long since hosted where these names once held strange power?
It might not be necessary, but it’s worth the reminder because our resident Kayo Expert, Hugh Puddle, will henceforth be on first-name basis with the Whole Sick Crew, a liberty which is kindly extended to those who publish a full ranking and learned description of every song in Kayo Dot’s girthy canon not once, but twice, purely for the amusement of a modest number of individuals who tend to listen to music with their eyes closed and brows furrowed. If you’re here, you’re probably one of them — if you’re not, why are you here? Get out! These gates are supposed to be guarded!
— Milo Ruggles
Thank’ee Milo! This is Hugh and we’re going in on all 71 tracks in the Kayo Dot discography. Just a couple of elephants to round up before we get started, chief among which is: should you be excited or even reading this if you have no idea what a Kayo Dot is?
Probably yes because neither do I, still; definitely yes if you like literally any of Talk Talk, Jeff Buckley, ISIS, Bark Psychosis, Krallice, Scott Walker, King Crimson, John Zorn, Sisters of Mercy, Tiamat, Susumu Hirasawa, chamber music, psychedelia, black metal, gothic rock, post-punk, synthpop, ambient or drone (and no, not all at once).
For all the stylistic parsing implied there, I rarely get hung up with genre pluralism with Kayo Dot in the way that I once did with, say, their parent project maudlin of the Well. There are references to be made (and I’ll be making them as we go), but there’s no pastiche here and each album in their discography does its own singular thing on its own terms. They aren’t at all eclectic in the Mr. Bungle sense, and this is very much for the better.
Anyhow, a few disclaimers:
I’ve been listening to Kayo Dot for almost half my life and, unlike most acts in that position, their appeal has not aged a day for me.
This may be a labyrinthine discography of wildly diverse and frequently challenging music, but I’ve done my best to structure the piece so that it provides easy expo on each release for anyone partially or wholly unfamiliar with the Kayo Dot discography.
This is not the first iteration of this ranking! I attempted a version of it in 2021, after the release of Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, but that list’s prose amounted to little more than low-effort in-jokes.
Although some reference is made to the old list, almost this entire piece has been redrafted and expanded to include the new album Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason.
The list therefore includes all tracks from all Kayo Dot LPs, with the additions of “Stained Glass” and “Don’t Touch Dead Animals” from their respective releases.
Say no more?! In we dig:
#71-#44
71. An Eye for a Lie (Blasphemy, 2019)
Well, we have to start somewhere! I can see some arguing that this is an unfair placement: Blasphemy is a dull album and very much needed more wayward experimentalism and fewer plodding guitar-led operatics. I hear you, but this onslaught of vocal effects over an indistinct muddle of an instrumental was very much not the answer for me. Kayo Dot have an extraordinarily broad palette across their discography, so it’s a shame that the Blasphemy track that sounds most unique even within that landscape is such a misfire.
70. All the Pain in All the Wide World (Plastic House on Base of Sky, 2016)
It’s a little unfair to Kayo Dot that my bottom two placements are both taken by failed experiments rather than run-of-the-mill tracks, but perhaps that just comes with the territory. Anyhow, this track is primarily notable for a conceptually interesting improvised vocal section in which Toby goes the distance to push his barriers as a singer over a gratingly long bridge section. It’s not a fun or particularly engaging studio experience, but I could imagine it being more engaging live.
Unfortunately, it kills Plastic House on Base of Sky’s momentum the moment it’s seemingly kicked into gear (see much further up for the opener “Amalia’s Theme”) — this is Kayo Dot’s glittery synth-laden sci-fi record, but “All the Pain in All the Wide World” has always been more nauseous travel than jaw-dropping galaxy wonderment to me. Alas.
I am also just now noticing that the first “the” in the title is capitalised on Bandcamp where the second is not. If this is a deliberate middle finger to title case, I may have to consider adjusting the placement. (Up or down? Who knows.)
69. Ocean Cumulonimbus (Blasphemy, 2019)
This one immediately starts Blasphemy out on the wrong foot. Something about the opening guitar line never sat right with me either dynamically (that shit gets absolutely NO time to build itself in whatsoever, just wham - full band in a sluggish groove) or rhythmically (I’m sure this is by design, but those drums are playing a practically identical rhythm without carrying an ounce of groove), and its peak moments owe more to crushing levels of overdrive than anything else. A shaky attempt at a dramatic opening and perhaps the closest thing I can imagine to an ‘autopilot’ Kayo Dot track.
68. Mirror Water, Lightning Night (Gamma Knife, 2012)
For those unfamiliar, Gamma Knife is a bizarro hodgepodge record made up of two chamber pieces that bookend a middle run of, uh, three lo-fi live recordings of woodwind-infused black metal. The upshot is almost as exciting as that may sound on paper, and “Mirror Water, Lightning Night” has never done much to distinguish itself among the album’s black metal tracks for me, beyond packing the most strident woodwind arrangement. We’ll see more memorable showcases of this album’s weird, weird palette further down.
67. The Something Opal (Blasphemy, 2019)
A similar story to “Ocean Cumulonimbus”, but this one gains points for a relatively personable vocal performance from Toby. Still missing the mark re. dramatic intrigue. Something’s off with this album’s production too, the whole thing sounds washed out to me.
66. Midnight Mystic Rise and Fall (Blasphemy, 2019)
“Midnight Mystic Rise and Fall” at least boasts an engaging opening, but this quickly gives way to a pulseless lull and more forgettable theatrics. Classic Blasphemy. Post your favourite fantastical post-clerical concept prog record in the comments.
65. The Black Stone (Hubardo, 2013)
This track is rightly infamous within the fanbase as a terrible prologue for a superb album (Hubardo is Kayo Dot’s longest record to date, and it takes Toby’s metal, chamber and prog leanings to respective extremities in its conceptual sprawl). I get that founding member and occult lyricist Jason Byron growling unintelligible cryptics over dead space for six fucking minutes was probably an apt way to open this crazy crazy journey, but this is a “what have I got myself into” opener in the most bemusing sense. Bonus points for an exciting finale — in fact, that chromatic rampage in the finale really is badass as anything and I’m going to give this song as much of a lift as I can justify as such.
Milo sez to the above: fair fair, but there is A LOT of work put in by the guitar to set a harmonic tone for the album that goes mad underrated, and even briefly inspired one shoddy Kiwi guitarist who has never been able to put theory into practice into experimenting with all kinds of incongruous notes. This is fun and wholesome and zany experience and I recommend it to anybody with fingers.
…and honestly, valid and real.
64. Right Hand is the One I Want (Blue Lambency Downward, 2008)
As you’ll see as we get further up the list, I’m a firm defender of Blue Lambency Downward’s unique blend of coy chamber jazz and clanky psych rock, and hold it to be the most underrated Kayo Dot record (likely as a result of how it alienated the predominantly metalhead audience of their first two records) — I love the way it veered into such a distinctive palette and singular atmosphere without sacrificing the arcane qualities or adventurous spirit of the first two Kayo Dot albums.
So that’s great. “Right Hand is the One I Want”, however, is anything but arcane. The lounge jazz of its opening half is too twee for my liking, and although it later returns to the murkier woodland atmosphere of the rest of the record, I can’t say it does so with much distinction or direction. This one’s a skip.
63. Longtime Disturbance On The Miracle Mile (Coffins on Io, 2014)
This song offers precisely one thing: a short timeout between two of Coffins on Io’s denser post-punk noir-rambles. It’s absolutely adequate for that purpose and otherwise largely forgettable — there are some nice vocal inflections here, but the melodies are a little flat by Toby’s standards. The eerie pentatonic synthline that creeps in at around 2:30 (and then again at 3:15) is the secret highlight here, but a secret highlight does not a four-minute padding tune elevate! Nor is And I will wear a mask of normal /To hide my mask of orgasmic shame a lyric I needed stuck in my head.
62. Vanishing Act in Blinding Gray (Blasphemy, 2019)
This track is Blasphemy’s dramatic centrepiece, and if the cheesy prog dynamics by which it goes about its business have grown off me a little (perhaps because I initially found it much more impressive than the rest of the album), then they still just about stick the landing. Toby’s vocal performance is maybe the best on the album and I enjoy the title a lot. If I were keener on the direction Blasphemy as a whole takes, this would probably be my favourite track on the record — and yet...
61. Brethren of the Cross (Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, 2021)
This one has always been my least favourite from Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, but it is still a decent showcase for the return to fantastical death/doom that Toby made with this one (he had originally planned on a maudlin of the Well reunion, but then Covid happened and he made this fine record with Jason Byron and motW/early Kayo Dot guitarist Greg Massi instead).
That intro is a great case-in-point for the fantastical rotten glory the whole record is steeped in, but something about the song is off pacing-wise to me and the melodic progression eludes me (up until the bridge about six minutes in, which is admittedly the kind of putrid taker of breath we’re after here). This swamp has bloated me!
60. Magnetism (Plastic House on Base of Sky, 2016)
No track sums up Plastic House...’s would-be-amazing-if-it-were-good factor quite like this one. Second to second, it’s full of bright ideas: I love those sparkly, sparkly retrofuture analogue synthtones and the eerie guitar stabs, but tracing a distinct rhythm or motif through it just gives me a headache. The song somehow unpicks itself to the point of joylessness (even though the dynamics are quite straightforward). It does have a climax, but it does not land so there’s that! If all you want from Kayo Dot is an Increasingly Loud showcase of freaked out space shit to trip your feckin brains out to, then this is a winner. It is not my favourite Susumu Hirasawa ripoff. What’s yours?
59. Lost Souls on Lonesome’s Way (Blasphemy, 2019)
Easily my favourite of Blasphemy’s Theatre Ov Goth Guitar tracks, mainly because Ron Varod lays down approximately all of the album’s most ear-catching phrasings, one after another. Hooray for guitars. Toby has a couple of superior vocal lines (especially early on), but returning to the song now, I’m reminded that while almost everything else in this discography has shown more and more depth to me over the decade+ I’ve been listening to it, Blasphemy remains a stubborn block of concrete at the mouth of the cave. We move.
58. Mental Shed (Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason, 2025)
Of every weirdo album in this weirdo band’s catalogue, their latest effort Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason might be the most contingent on being heard
a) as a whole, and
b) on many separate occasions before you piece together a Firm Opinion.
This disadvantages it hugely when it comes to horrible numerical lists like this one, and “Mental Shed” is most disadvantaged of all because there is frankly no way I am ever going to tune into Toby Driver rasping over eerie keyboards and (eh) textural cymbals for eleven straight minutes if it doesn’t have the rest of this singularly liminal record following hot on its heels. Sorry. It reminds me of “The Black Stone” without the evil climax, although Toby’s vocals are much less taxing here than Jason Byron’s were on that song, so hooray for that.
Anyway, as a standalone outing, this one is an immediate skip; as the opening chapter to a more holistic journey, well — it certainly sets a scene. The cadence in the final minute is almost worth the wait. Hmm. I would perhaps adore this if it were a Boris instrumental?
57. The Sow Submits (Blue Lambency Downward, 2008)
Man, I used to hate this song (the last iteration of this list had it fourth from the bottom), but has taken over a decade of coming back to it to realise that, y’know what, that final minute and a half is exactly the kind of dusty-object-on-attic-shelf gold I adore Toby Driver for. The opening motif still makes me feel vaguely ill, but Blue Lambency Downward is such a woodland trip that it can accommodate a few evil mushrooms — and anyway, this song has the only glissandos I can describe with a straight face as ‘bristling’? Invaluable!
56. Rings of Earth (Plastic House on Base of Sky, 2016)
More sparklysynth space antics from KD's most aesthetic heavy album is what I blurbed in the last list. Hmm! 'Most aesthetically reliant', maybe. ‘Sparkling, synthy', definitely.
This one's got a Bowie-ish quality that I can almost bop along to, but it's still a lot denser and more drawn out than feel it needs to be, not least because this era of KD was about as groove-apathetic as you could imagine. However, I am a fan of the doomy coda, which sees Toby voice possibly my favourite vocal moment from the album. This could have been a great track! On an album that could have beeen great! Why did Kayo Dayo have to delve into space-age synthpop, nail the palette, and then strip it of almost everything that made it catchy or infectious to begin with? My original ranking had this above "Abyss Hinge 2" and "Whisper Ineffable" — the fuck?
55. Blasphemy: A Prophecy (Blasphemy, 2019)
I find it hilarious that this track is at once the closest thing Kayo Dot has to a pop song and one of the single nerdiest things I’ve heard in my life! Blasphemy’s tabletop RPG itch is especially apparent here, right down to the medieval folk motifs that sustain it. Toby’s painfully clear enunciation of unfiltered fantasyspeak is what it is, but he kneels long and hard at the altar of fire-n-brimstone and the track does pack a certain dramatic flair as such. It would be so, so easy to ridicule it, but that medieval hook really is catchy.
54. Abyss Hinge 1: Sleeping Birds Sighing in Roscolux (Coyote, 2010)
Is this an interlude? Is this a song? I’m not sure exactly what it is, beyond probably the closest Toby has ever come to vindicating the pretentious blowhards who used to act smart by claiming Kayo Dot was free jazz, but it sounds fantastic even if it lacks the substance of the other four Coyote tracks. Those skronking, honking, shivering tones are a perfect introduction to the album’s harrowing palette, and it doubles as a timely shot in the arm after “Whisper Ineffable”’s murky expanse. I can’t justify a higher placement given how light it is on impact, but it still excels at what it does.
53. The First Matter (Saturn in the Guise of Sadness) (Hubardo, 2013)
I used to think that “The First Matter” and “The Second Operation” were perfectly balanced as two cheeks of Hubardo’s large-arsed lacuna (with the rampaging metal largely stacked before and the theatrical prog curiosities largely placed after), but then I realised last year that “The Second Operation” is astral nectar tapped directly from Harold Budd’s Pavilion of Dreams era, whereas this is a leaden post-punk clunker that undramatically and unremarkably anticipates the direction Kayot Doo would take with more zest on Coffins on Io. I’m exaggerating (slightly) because GAWD those synths sound amazing, but still...
52. Get Out of the Tower (Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, 2021)
One of the heavier cuts (but not the heaviest!) from KD’s most decidedly heavy album in some time! The short story here is pretty encouraging: fierce moments of doomchurn emerge from uneasy downtime bass amblings, all building to an unexpectedly savage outro. Phwoar, what a beatdown! Angry Kayo is a rare mood, so enjoy it while it lasts.
The long story is that I used to think this song would grow on me, but it did NOT (although the setlists seem to indicate that Toby rates it pretty highly). I don’t love its main motifs and Moss... already has enough songs that trudge their way along to crushing payoffs that I don’t care much for how this one’s verses drag their feet.
More interestingly, the tremolo line from 2:45ish onwards has made me realise that Moss... actually has surprising common melodic ground with Every Rock...’s haunting synthscapes, even if the execution is very different. Music is not a straight line! This song is quite good.
51. Automatic Writing (Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason, 2025)
Urggggh, every track on this album is a nightmare to rank, but especially this one! 23 minutes of the most barren ghostscape Kayo and the Dots have ever visited, and Toby’s performance has tangible presence and direction through the entire thing? Who on earth is going to shiver to this outside of the album when it’s a hell of a gauntlet even in sequence?
And yet, there are so many shivers to be had here — this might be the most classic example on the list of an inaccessible and uncompromising track that goes about its business so well that I don’t want to sell it short. The way it gradually draws itself back together in the final quarter earns a considerable amount of goodwill, but this is one you have to learn to float with - and if you’re still struggling to get into it, I dunno, pretend it’s a snail’s-pace cover of “Lethe” in the style of Talk Talk, or whatever bollocks.
50. Void in Virgo (The Nature of Sacrifice) (Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, 2021)
YES at last, a Kayo Dot song you could feasibly eyebrow-raise for being a little too cheesy! What more could you ask of a single for their most resolutely metal album in years? “Void in Virgo” has always been a little too short of friction or the thrill of the unknown to land in my favourites, but there’s no denying that that cosmic swoon of a chorus is along Toby’s most melodious and immediately satisfying to date. This track plays it squeaky clean from start to finish, and is arguably less at home amidst Moss...’ fetid doomscapes than it might have been on Blasphemy’s more sanitary high fantasies, but then again having something a little less ghoulish goes a long way on this tracklist. A pleasant tune in any case.
49. Ocellated God (Gamma Knife, 2012)
Unhinged shit on this one. I like how it teases a straightforward metal ripper for the opening minute or so, before giving way to a psychedelic maelstrom that sucks in and belches out every glimpse of hell your worst headaches have ever burdened you with. Those screams are particularly gnarly, and since most KD songs sound so meticulously realised, this one’s pure chaos is an exciting departure in a similar way as, say, the distortion and killswitch abuse of “Don’t Touch Dead Animals”’ climax. Perhaps it gains the most of the Gamma Knife metal tracks from being a live recording? It still hurts my head.
48. Brittle Urchin (Plastic House on Base of Sky, 2016)
I’m sure that this song, a glum wrap-up that sits at the end of Plastic House… as by far its shortest and most simplistic outing, was not supposed to be the album’s second best track, but there you go. It’s the only track on the entire album with a rhythm you can bop your head to in public, and both its dour melodies and decidedly minimal palette remind me of the slow cuts on maudlin of the Well’s Part the Second (the mopey bridge in “Clover Garland Island”, anyone?) — and that record is sometimes my favourite Toby project of them all, so up we go with “Brittle Urchin”! As a song, it’s solid. As a closer to an album I don’t love that has very little in common with any of the other tracks, it’s a pyrrhic joy!
I am now wondering whether I should have included Part the Second, or indeed the whole Tobyverse in this list, and am going to motor on immediately for the sake of my own sanity.
47. Lethe (Gamma Knife, 2012)
As solemn as those bells and Gregorian chants are, “Lethe” has always felt lightweight to me, like it would have made the perfect overture to the Kayo Dot chamber LP that never was but somehow opened up as an unnecessarily graceful carpet pull on this grubby lo-fi metal album. Is this unfair? It’s still a lovely piece of music, but it’s too fleeting to offer as much as I’d like on its own terms; there are plenty of suggestive Kayo Dot tracks that provide glimpses in strange other worlds and then disappear the moment they’ve conveyed their impression (Blue Lambency Downward is especially good at this), but this song’s pocket of reality feels half-realised to me. It’s thoroughly pleasant by any estimations, at least.
46. Amalia’s Theme (Plastic House on Base of Sky, 2016)
“Amalia’s Theme” is the best track on PHOBOS by virtue of being the most melodically engaging and rhythmically consistent, and even then I spend half the runtime entirely uninvested in where it’s ebbing to and flowing from. 10/10 as a showcase of this awesome futuristic palette that doesn’t give me a headache, 7/10 as a song I feel compelled to come back to: it kinda lands as proof of the album’s concept, but even then I’m left a little nonplussed. Still, we do love that palette in this house!
45. Rite of Goetic Evocation (Gamma Knife, 2012)
My favourite of the Gamma Knife metal trilogy is probably the most dynamic cut there: “Rite of Goetic Evocation” doesn’t quite pack the same instant momentum of “Ocellated God”, but it makes up for it with the number of twists and turns in its runtime. The guitar work here is probably the best on the album, as is the woodwind interplay; there’s something feverish about the way it settles at various points into paralytic lulls only to rouse itself with a choice tremolo riff or woodwind flurry, and that, I hope, is what we all tuned in for to begin with.
44. Turbine, Hook, and Haul (Blasphemy, 2019)
The best track on Blasphemy is pretty great! More than anything else on the album, this one thrives in misty synthscapes and slow, creeping gloom, both of which have been critical strengths across most recent-ish incarnations of the Driververse, and you can feel exactly why here. One of the few respects in which Blasphemy distinguishes itself is pure immediacy, and “Turbine, Hook, and Haul” definitely takes this in its stride: there’s something intuitively pleasing about its synth tones and gentle progression, even when things take a turn for the mysterious later on. If this had been a fairer representation of the Kayo Dot-lite sound this album played with, then perhaps we’d be complaining that it didn’t catch more new followers — but alas.
Brief Intermission
We’re still under halfway through the list, but with two albums entirely covered and two yet to surface at all, the breakdown of remaining tracks runs as follows:
Blasphemy: 0 (of 8)
Blue Lambency Downward: 5 (of 7)
Choirs of the Eye: 5 (of 5)
Coffins on Io: 5 (of 6)
Coyote: 4 (of 5)
Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue: 5 (of 5)
Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason: 3 (of 5)
Gamma Knife: 1 (of 5)
Hubardo: 9 (of 11)
Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike: 4 (of 7)
Plastic House on Base of Sky: 0 (of 5)
Additional releases: 2 (of 2)
My album ranking is largely inferable from this data, but make no assumptions as we go on! We’ve been in thumbs-up territory since “Lethe” at the latest, but the ends get increasingly difficult to split from hereon out…
#43-#19
43. Floodgate (Hubardo, 2013)
This is a one-song fuck you to everyone who ever complained about Kayo Dot not playing enough metal post-Choirs of the Eye. It’s heavy, sludgy, paced in alternating increments of freight-train and diplodocus, and disgusting enough that I hardly ever revisit it —and so I have often underrated it, forgetting that this is likely the most legitimately nasty metal tune Toby will ever put his name to. Its chief competition in that regard is “Ocellated God”, but it gets the edge by virtue of a drum performance from the depths of hypermagic HELL. I shudder to think what this must have been like in front of KD’s infamously impassive live audiences. Big overkill. Great freak metal.
42. Abyss Hinge 2: The Shrinking Armature (Coyote, 2010)
Although this is Coyote’s longest and most structurally-contorted song (read: prone to meander), it was once one of the most accessible moments of the album to me at first. Strange — perhaps because it’s the least emotionally laden track on the album, and also one of the most harmonically generous (those horns at the start come close to vintage maudlin of the Well phrasings at the points, and it’s very easy to hear echoes of this style of arrangement in the more outgoing likes of “The Wait of the World” on Hubardo).
So that’s nice. I think getting into jazz was more helpful for opening this album up to me than any other Kayo Dot release — it may not be ‘free’, but the harmony is plain difficult at points. This track is relatively forgiving, and I don’t look forward to it now as much as I did when the darker parts of this darkest of records had yet to pierce my thick late-adolescent skull, but the eerie back-and-forth that the brass settles into at around 11:30 is still one of the most uniquely satisfying order-out-of-chaos moments in the Kayo canon.
41. Don’t Touch Dead Animals (Don’t Touch Dead Animals (split with Bloody Panda), 2006)
This is less a song (hardly anything songlike at all about that first half’s descent from moody rock to chamber chaos!) and much more a time capsule of when Kayo Dot were fresh-faced avant-squirts prepared to stare down the world with zany pretension and had yet to suffer any of the grim material consequences of alienating half their audience with increasingly oblique output or the streaming era sinking its claws over the ‘10s.
It seems like ancient history now that the core of this hand was Toby’s creative partnership with Mia Matsumiya, and while the records I most associate with that era (Dowsing, Blue Lambency Downward) have aged fantastically unto themselves, this scrappy freak of a song is about as immature and full of look-what-we-gone-done self-referentiality as anything they made. I find this pretty endearing — each half of the song being prefaced by a few lines of terrible poetry, the gratuitous levels of feedback in the explosive second half, the extents to which Mia shreds her throat for that climax, etc.: gold! — but it’s too much of a hodgepodge to land any further up.
The knockout it lands at the close is really something though — perhaps the one Hot Take I have here is that while it can’t compete with either song’s meticulous build-up, this one packs a much more satisfying volcanic noise finale than anything “Aura on an Asylum Wall” or “The Manifold Curiosity” could deliver.
So there you go, it’s better than two of the best Kayo Dot songs, but also not really.
40. Blue Lambency Downward (Blue Lambency Downward, 2008)
This is a weird song.
It was the first Kayo Dot song I knowingly heard, as opposed to, you know, those other Kayo Dot songs that they play on the radio/ shut up.
It was the first Kayo Dot song I heard.
It sounded like a racoon taking refuge inside a washing machine on a DMT trip and facing the consequences, and it still sounds like that now. I have very strong associations with it without necessarily having strong feelings positively or negatively, but the opening minutes are a perfect introduction to this album’s uncanny pocket of psychedelia.
Now that I think about it, it picks up very nicely where “Amaranth the Peddler” left off at the end of Dowsing Anemone. The winding middle section tends to lose me, but there are worse places to end up lost. I wonder if the rest of the record would have such a charming sense of mystery to it if this track weren’t such an impenetrable opener.
It’s an approach.
Is this the exact middle of the list? It probably belongs there.
39. Spectrum of One Colour (Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, 2021)
At the time of release, my thoughts on this relatively concise heavy slugger were overwhelmingly positive, and while there’s still a lot to love here, I don’t think its long-term impact is on quite the same level as the way its dramatic lurches hit at first. The crushing finale is excellent, but at this point I’m mainly coming back for the panic attack that kicks in on “gnawing sound” and Toby’s frankly demented delivery of the following verse.
I originally had it ranked over ten places above “Vision Adjustment to Another Wavelength”, but reassessing things now, that track is definitely the superior pick from KD’s shorter, midtempo bruisers. A solid song regardless, not much to say here other than that it’s not quite the album highlight I thought it might be but it will hand you your arse on a plate if you give it half a chance.
38. Closet Door in the Room Where She Died (Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason, 2025)
If you remember where “The Black Stone” and “Mental Shed” landed, you’d expect quarter of an hour of Jason Byron* snarling ectoplasm over a zero-percussion spookscape to get similar treatment. Not so! “Closet Door...” atones for both those earlier tracks and then some for me, and I love it as a horror-gauntlet centrepiece to Every Rock.... Pacing is key here: although Byron’s vocal is pure chills when it’s on, he’s wise to dip out of the frame after each line or two, ensuring that we feel the full weight of the negative space behind him. I can’t believe how engaging this track is, or how quickly it seems to pass, but there we are -- just do not go anywhere near it in the wrong headspace.
*is this Byron? The album credits say he’s on vox for this song, but it sounds more like Toby to me?
37. Offramp Cycle, Pattern 22 (Coffins on Io, 2014)
“Offramp Cycle, Pattern 22” is perhaps the most conventionally songlike track on Coffins on Io, using one solid groove as the basis for a simple verse/chorus tradeoff that sustains the song until it doesn’t. It’s almost catchy enough that we could call it Toby’s “Blue Monday” or “Love Like Blood” without laughing at ourselves, and that’s close enough.
Honestly, Kayo Dot’s approach to whatever the palette in question is tends to be so fiercely reinterpretive that it still takes me aback to hear the band comfortably vibing out to the spirit of dance-friendly ‘80s post-punk like this. It proves a good influence in other regards too: this album’s whole retro cyberpunk/cosmic horror vibe pairs particularly well with Toby’s lyrical, and I love how this song in particular imposes a sense of terse Cool that forces him to do more with less as far as imagery goes. Is there a single line in this discography as succinct or instantly memorable as Blood on my hands, and a thing in the backseat / That used to be human?
It’s a little tame to claw any higher up the list and its coda winds on too for my liking, but this is still a neat bit of time-travelling pastiche.
36. The Wait of the World (Hubardo, 2013)
Y’know what, this may be the closest Toby Driver’s exquisite composerly elegance has ever come to full-tilt Mars Volta-style prog cancer, but it’s a fun enough romp to get a pass. I still have no idea how to feel about it as a closer to Hubardo — does an album with this much girth and gravity really benefit from an intro that goofy? It puts a grin on my face regardless, and the chord modulations throughout that doozy of a four-minute finale are worth the wank rampage that leads up to them. Does it collapse under its own weight? Is this calibre of fart-brass the ultimate get out of jail free? Do I even have a steady opinion here? Keep on addling me with that prog jank!
35. Oracle by Severed Head (Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason, 2025)
I like how even the ‘event’ songs on Every Rock... are resistant to stable rhythms and seem completely content to drift away with themselves! “Oracle by Severed Head” is one of the most approachable things here by a mile, certainly in being the most conventionally dreamlike (this one is for the Alora Crucible fans!), and even then it just churns along for 8 minutes before kicking off in a swoonable string climax and giving way to the nightmare that is “Closet Door in the Room Where She Died”. It’s lovely! The timbre is lovely across the board – this album is as much a showcase of texture as of atmosphere, and to that end the violin is perfect. Toby’s croon has got a liturgical vibe going on, but he never gets overbearing with it. You can absolutely listen to this one outside of album context; great tune.
34. The Knight Errant (Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, 2021)
This tune’s gothic fantasy cold opening is everything! DU-DU-DUH we are IN! And a good thing too, because that banger of a kickoff has to pack enough momentum to sustain a good four minutes of the song going nowhere fast; it carries itself so hard on pure phlegmy dungeon vibes that its righteous doom-finale practically comes at a premium. Rock on.
33. Library Subterranean (Coffins on Io, 2014)
Is there another song in this discography that shows off its respective album’s strengths and weaknesses in such equal measure as this one? (Scroll back for “Magnetism”, I guess.) Don’t get me wrong, “Library Subterranean” is great -- it packs Toby’s bounciest and most charismatic verses in the mirrorshades dry-ice goth frontman look he rocked for this era, and I’m a big fan of the way it derails into flashing sirens and runaway guitarmelt: a full-on cosmic horror car chase seemed just the shot in the arm that the first half of this album shied away from... but why do the band take their foot off the pedal the moment the chase kicks in? The backend of this track squanders a kickass idea to repetition, and by the time a menacing brass layer arrives to raise the stakes towards the end it’s all too late. Oh well. My feelings are still overall positive, but this one’s placement is strictly middle of the pack.
32. The Mortality of Doves (Coffins on Io, 2014)
I haven’t run the numbers, but “The Mortality of Doves” might have had the single biggest personal falloff of any track since I last ranked this band. What happened? Well, nothing to get flustered over — it’s still an excellent opener, it still does an excellent job of balancing slow yet deliberate progressions and against the slick, greasy cool that this album lives and dies by, and it still occupies a 10-minute+ runtime that feels dramatically shorter than it really is. I like it a lot, and love the way that the arrangement is always bringing different elements in and out of focus even when the song settles into a linear plod (”Offramp Cycle” and “Library Subterranean” could have taken notes here)...
...but that linearity has its limits (a common theme, as you’ll see carrying on up the list). Everything about this track is structurally coherent to a fault, and after however many years I’ve found it’s lost a certain chunk of its intrigue through telegraphing its every move and leaving little to the imagination. Not sure whether to accuse the song of being too well-behaved for cop responsibility for overlistening to it, but the murk on this one has long since been penetrated. Yikes.
31. Passing the River (Hubardo, 2013)
Perhaps more than other Kayo Dot records, the major twists on Hubardo tend to take place between individual tracks rather than within them, which tracks considering how enormous this record is. I think this goes some way to explaining why this is one of their most accessible and best received works in spite of its dimensions - most of these tracks are very approachable in and of themselves.
Not so “Passing the River”! This is comfortably the most explorative track on the record! The opening verses are shockingly chill and their toe-tapping rhythm forever has me convinced that Toby is about to break into an anthemic pop chorus and manifest his ultimate Savage Garden moment (and I am not confident enough in whatever I mean by that to hyperlink the artist name, thank you!) — but naturally, he does not! The track veers off into haunted avant backwaters, howling and clattering its way through various twists or turns before a few coda lines resolve it perhaps a little too daintily.
I’m struck by how un-reliant this song is on metal for raising avant clamour compared to the rest of the album, and distantly reminded of both Dowsing and Coyote, but in truth this is a pretty singular section within the Kayoverse. I am also reminded (in theory, not in palette) of “Marathon” in how it draws equal parts on maximalism and minimalism, in often surprising ways. This song used to be a fair bit higher, but now it is here. Unlike “The Mortality of Doves” just above it, I’m not sure why.
30. Vision Adjustment to Another Wavelength (Hubardo, 2013)
Whatever concept Gamma Knife was supposed to be proof of, this song takes it and runs its drunken, astral-poetic way to the bank with it: it’s heavy as balls, and the flutes in the bridge are an absolute murder (by which I mean that I wish them to saw directly through my neck and ankles and feed whatever flops off to the hogs)! I love how compact it is! It’s amazing that neither this nor “Zlida Caosgi” were singles from Hubardo. Fuck me, I remember hearing both for the first time having heard the three actual singles (”And He Built Him a Boat”, “Thief” and “Passing the River” (in that order)) and having no idea how the album as a whole would string together. The best of times!
My thoughts on this song from five years ago include the following:
This is another track that works an absolute treat in sequence but maybe feels a little not-quite-polydimensional to offer as much as a standalone?
Fuck outta here! This slaps as a standalone! I also observed that
It gets the edge over Brittle Urchin [no shit] because Toby yelling "DUST" is badass and the guitars do dissonant semiquaver run things literally every bar [of course] and the atmospheric woodwindy coda thing feels like a potential final form of the Gamma Knife dissoDot mission statement [shit fuck sorry, already covered that one], but I think all these are things Hubardo nailed bigger and better and zazzier elsewhere
Much of this is true, but this song is still a real force.
29. The Useless Ladder (Blue Lambency Downward, 2008)
“The Useless Ladder” is the shortest track on this list and perhaps the most elliptical, so I can see a few heads being scratched over a placement this high; what is an oddball miniature doing on top of all that Serious Music? Does it even go anywhere?
Admittedly not, but it’s one of the best examples of the classic Kayo Dot rusty-key-to-unknown-drawer appeal that runs through Blue Lambency Downward like nothing else. I love how this album, perhaps this song most of all, brings such a playful edge to that dusty intrigue (the clarinet and vocal harmonies most of all) — does the song tease something ominous, or are its ominous qualities just affected to tease? Who knows. Great, underrated track anyhow. It plays like an even more bitesized version of the “Clelia Walking” experience, and, well, scroll down to see how we feel about that one.
28. Whisper Ineffable (Coyote, 2010)
RIGHT THEN
ALL SENSATIONS
CAME OUT OF MY
BO-
-DY
This has been perhaps the slowest grower in the entire Kayo Dot discog for me, and having never paid too much to the lyrics outside of the opening lines of “Calonyction Girl”, it took until redrafting this list in 2026 for the sheer morbid horror of its lyrics and voice to hit.
For anyone unfamiliar, the lyrics to Coyote were written by Toby’s collaborator Yuko Sueta about her experience dying of breast cancer (she sadly lost her battle before the album’s release). It’s all too easy to see Kayo Dot as a vehicle of obscurity, wrapped up in mysticism and fantasy — and in many ways, it is that, but for all its impenetrable gloom, Coyote is frighteningly emotionally present at points, and it strikes a very different chord to their other material as such.
It’s the complete opposite of, say, the no-filter A Crow Looked at Me approach to morbid subject matter: the harder you have to strain your ears through the layers of dramatic performance and obtuse melodies, the more startling it is to catch the voice-behind-Toby’s-voice, to tune into those half-candid half-abstract images or searing isolation and dissociating pain that would sound (as in my opinion much of Crow... very much does) brittle, awkward and impossible if they were presented at face value. And having just typed all that without thinking, of course: “Whisper Ineffable”! This track really couldn’t have been titled anything else. I used to admire it for its bass-heavy instrumental bookending, which is of course still excellent, but those later verses are just flooring. A horrible dark-night-of-the-soul masterstroke (though the earlier verses do take their time to warm up).
27. Epipsychidion (Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, 2021)
While I still rate Moss... as a solid album and a welcome, freshly putrefied return to the fantastical Tiamat/My Dying Bride inspirations that suffused Toby’s maudlin of the Well days, it’s far from the most adventurous Kayo Dot album and has aged neither especially well nor badly for me as a result. However, recognising this has made me that extra bit more appreciative of how much of an explorative ZAMN factor “Epipsychidion” packs at the eleventh hour! From its glorious drone outro to its earlier flirtations with extreme metal, this is by far the Moss... track most prepared to play fast and loose with left turns and unpredictable stylisation, and, uh, the title also and correctly translates from (...) uh, Flemish for “Epic Closer” so there’s that. It walks that walk!
26. Wayfarer (Choirs of the Eye, 2003)
And now at last, with the top-half threshold firmly crossed, it is finally time for our first Choirs of the Eye track! (A reminder that we’ve still yet to see anything from Dowsing Anemone with Copper Tongue.) Why is “Wayfarer”, in all its gauzy Romantic glory my weakest track on the record by some margin? No mincing words: it’s the frilliest and least momentous. I’ve read some people — not many, but a pretty established minority — claim that this is their favourite track on the album, and while I respect them deeply and treasure their insight, this is a butt-boring take that throws out all the mercurial depths, all the structural subversion, all the bracing impact that makes Choirs such a timelessly mesmerising listen in favour of Toby’s storytime hour for guitar-prone insomniacs.
At that point, just listen to Jeff Buckley! “So Real” and “Dream Brother” hit every beat this thing does in half the time! Hell, so does “A Pitcher of Summer”. I can’t be too mean: “Wayfarer” is still in the top half of the list, it does work perfectly to have a melodic lacuna between Choirs’ two giant centrepiece tracks, and the shimmering coda where he croons that whole farewell, starry wayfarer section is deeply precious to me — but this is too tame for too long and it shall go no higher.
Milo sez that this placement is political, if well-reasoned; a jettisoning of feeling to attach a cold, objective, band-encompassing thesis to a rare and revealing instance of antithesis that gives any subsequent dissolution of form more weight. The gang can do it straight better than anybody! Rejoice! Now I’m not sayin’ it should be anybody or everybody’s number one pick or anything, but I swear to the Eldritch Unknowing that if I see a track from, say, Every Rock… higher than this one I’m gonna sneak into your attic, stuff myself into a gaudy steamer trunk, and await a particularly fetid form of decay.
25. Crown-In-The-Muck (Hubardo, 2013)
The real first track on on Hubardo, and the first of many excellent heavy cuts to come! Half this one’s charm is in the way the ominous horns and winding arpeggios of its introduction give way to the whispers of the first verse (one of the tightest transitions in this discog, for my money) and the other half is in the absolute rampage it finally unleashes at the end. Is the sludged-out horror of a chorus in between these sections also charming? I’ve never felt especially drawn to it, but the shifts of pace in this track are so slick that I can still get kicks out of seeing it schmooze like a well-oiled black heart over the pack ice of evil. A thoroughly engaging track, a perfect case study in what Hubardo brings to the table.
24. Spirit Photography (Coffins on Io, 2014)
I used to think this song was all vibes (and saxophone) and dismissed it as a lightweight offering, until I realised that the majority of this album is in fact a lightweight offering built on vibes — and now it’s a highlight! I like how content it is to drift along rather than tease momentum, in large part because the lyrics wallpaper it with precisely the right blend of pokey, poorly heated domestics and lurking cosmic horror that many a Kayo Dot winner has lived and slain by — and if it gets there as an eerie chillout, so much the better. Would David Sylvian condone it? I think he might well!
23. Blind Creature of Slime (Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason, 2025)
Look, this track may not be as individually satisfying as “Oracle by Severed Head” and it’s probably twice as long as it needs to be (I don’t care how many arcane verses Jason Byron wrote for it), but it comes in so hard with such a gratifying change of pace after “Automatic Writing” that it snags the album crown and as much indiscriminate simpage as I can justify. I love the title image, especially how it makes me think of the album artwork (which I adore - probably their best since Choirs), and I love how it’s heavy as hell purely through dissonant chord voicings and lurching rhythms (not a whiff of distortion here), and I LOVE how much power there is to Toby’s performance here — it’s unreal more more mileage he gets out of this theatrical style of cleans here than when he was belting in a similar style for dramatic effect on Blasphemy. That’s the power of a good album-long reverie. Also holy shit those synth(?)voices in the background at around 5:30 are terrifying. I don’t know or care if it’s a perfect song, but it’s absolutely the perfect closer for Every Rock....
Milo sez: well fucking shucks, I’ve got some farewells to dole out and a couple of planes to catch. I guess I’d better do you the favour of listening to this before I stink up your attic.
As a serial bed-and-headphones listener, I think I usually fall asleep (and start convulsing and frothing at the mouth) around when “Closet Door…" starts (and keeps) winding into its business. Nobody told me this album ends in sickening dissonant triumph? I have much to reconsider, and I imagine the average wayfaring Kayo Dot fan probably will too.
22. Stained Glass (Stained Glass, 2010)
“Stained Glass” on paper should be one of my absolutely favourite Kayo Dot tracks: a twenty-minute labyrinth of delicate vibraphone progressions interspersed with horror synths sounds like an easy home run given how much I love it when Toby gets eerie in a sparser palette, but it doesn’t fully gel for me structurally. The gorgeous intro gives way to a section that teases a darker direction, only to give way to nothing, and I find myself a little perturbed by how long the track takes to gather itself again.
From the slow haunt-out at around eight minutes through to the end is the absolute money though. I *love* how naturally those vibes drift away with themselves and how much of a fright it is when an exorcism of synths sets in at around the sixteen minute mark. That entire section is dynamite and I wouldn’t change a thing about it; it reminds me heavily of John Zorn’s Interzone (perhaps the most overt Zorn-ism I can think of in any of Toby’s work, which is saying something), and I am gripped. I always forget how this song ends. Is that to its detriment?
I once found a CD copy of this in the metal section of an Edinburgh HMV in (probably) 2012 — in hindsight, so surreal on so many levels. A different time.
21. ___ On Limpid Form (Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue, 2006)
It is TIME for our first Dowsing Anemone song, and there are no prizes for having guessed which one was going to land first. For the inexperienced, the 12-minute marathon of “___ On Limpid Form”’s clanging outro makes it perhaps the most controversial track in the whole Kayo Dot canon, and although there is something to latch onto in its painfully slow build of feedback and rackety percussion, I, uh, hear the argument. It’s a similar case to “Stained Glass” in that I love so much about this track but cannot justify a higher placement given how flagrantly its structural bloat takes the piss.
Those parts to love though? Well, the melodic proggish song-within-a-song is wonderful for those few early minutes (perhaps the single most immediate glimpse this album ever gives of its oh so specific space of misty limbo and innocuous shadowy forms weaving around eerily?), but what ultimately brings the track home for me is the role it plays within Dowsing’s wider take on negative space. Honestly, I don’t think I’d like this song nearly as much if “Amaranth the Peddler” didn’t pick up so well from its abrasive wash-out, as though “___ On Limpid Form” has pushed us entirely off the edge of the map only for us to land in some fairy-addled plane of nirvana: those punishing chords feel like somehow a necessary soul-scouring given where we end up. Do you know any other two-song combos that will do that to you? This is the right song in the right place.
20. The Second Operation (Lunar Water) (Hubardo, 2013)
I’ve been on a real kick with this track lately, to the point that I was tempted to declare it the peak of chamber Kayo and shunt it another 5 places up the list — and the sole reason I haven’t is that for a song this languorous, this intent on floating and drifting, it feels too saturated with ideas to command the kind of negative space that, say, the miracle tracks on Dowsing… make such magic out of (perhaps the backing vocals are particularly dense here?)
Other than that, this thing is pure kino! The Pavilion of Dreams goes to the moon, plants flowers and sings lullabies to them! I love how spaced out vs. harmonically rich this track is (it’s practically 13 minutes of how many 9ths can you shove into one piece) and it’s grown from a midway test of patience to a firm Hubardo highlight for me. Should it be higher? We shall see next time.
19. Cartogram Out of Phase (Coyote, 2010)
I first heard Coyote in perhaps 2012, and it’s taken me until now to see through the hubble-bubble and aesthetic jumble of Byron and Toby’s respective styles and realise that Yuko Sueta’s short collection of verses on this album are probably the best lyrics on a Kayo Dot release. As I touched on with “Whisper Ineffable”, Toby’s performance style is so lurid and interpretive that the full force of the words is often veiled (and far better that than that he tried to deliver them straight!), but just look at this:
On top of the roof I realized that there was no moon; Searching for it among the sprinkled stars I gazed into the light that’s reaching in from millions of years ago! See-- see in the past outside the present Out-world within my room, the castle of monologues; the endless failures are trapped. The moon has disappeared because now the world is reversed and my feet are on her land I’m out of the room of my mind with a perfect shape of love filling this hole in my heart
I think these are my favourite lines on Coyote, and at any rate “Cartogram Out of Phase” is certainly the most songlike piece on the record. No more empty space, no more clanging bass or plaintive brass, just dour chords and one solemn Scott Walker-like verse after another. Whatever fear of the unknown, of invisible death, whatever nightmare of empty space the rest of the album has been orbiting, it comes to terms with itself here.
It’s not melodramatic (though Toby’s strained cadences do particular justice to these lines), it’s not a grand reckoning, it’s too oblique to be emotionally manipulative, but it does catch the weight and helplessness of a shell of a person making a fragile peace with their imminent passing in a way I find deeply affecting and unlike anything else at all.
So yes, a pretty good song.
Notes on the Coyote CD sleeve
Different lyric websites have different formattings and in some cases very different renderings of the lyrics to “Cartogram Out of Phase”, as is often the way with such things. E.g., The heir and his failures of trials vs. The endless failures are trapped.
I couldn’t find any lyrics on the Bandcamp page, but then I remembered my CD copy of Coyote! Along with the rest of my collection, I had boxed and stored it in my folks’ attic when I moved to Japan for the first time. In an episode alarmingly reflective of the appeal many probably imagine this band to hold, I fought off spiderwebs and fibreglass insulation, browsed my entire teenage taste in mostly the wrong order, and eventually found Coyote in the hardest to reach box at the very bottom of a tall stack, pictured below (minus the overheads, naturally):
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that the sleeve notes contain (almost) no lyrics whatsoever, which leaves the verses quoted overhead as my best efforts working by ear. Purely so I have something to share for my blundering, here is what they do contain:
As credited almost illegibly in the final image, all drawings and artwork are by Toby (and not by Yuko Sueta herself). You can probably find high res versions of all these images online, and an alternative version of the topmost image is shown on the album’s live release:
#18-#1
18. The Assassination Of Adam (Coffins on Io, 2014)
“The Assassination of Adam” goes! I used to think of it as a kinetic outlier, but as the pulse of the other Coffins on Io track has (mostly) felt more and more sluggish to me over time, it’s become all too tempting to imagine Toby’s take on the same palette where this field of urgency and arcane jumpscares was the rule rather than the exception. Coffins on Io may be the most coasting-on-vibes Kayo Dot album, but this fucking track kicks down the wall into another dimension and offers a few terrifying, electric moments when direct communion seems possible between the band’s groovy goth cocktail and whichever eldritch horror. Hooray for half-intelligible vocals and occult verse! Hooray for the saxophone resolution! Handily the best song on the album.
17. Clelia Walking (Blue Lambency Downward, 2008)
Clelia walks, alright! She tiptoes all over those rustling cymbals and bubbling synths, flits around nervous woodwinds and spooky violins, and slips promptly out of sight whenever the band burst into distorted clamour. I love how oblique this thing is as an end-to-end structure, but how intuitively it flows from section to section; getting lost in someone else’s faerie glade has never been easier, and although there’s a real threat of darkness behind this track, it never seems to blunder into the thick of things.
I actually think Blue Lambency Downward is every bit as dark as Choirs or Dowsing in its way, but it sets up an oddball shrine of harmony and suggests the shadows around its margins rather than plunging headlong into demonic reckonings like its predecessors. Perhaps that’s why it’s so misunderstood? Anyway, whatever hauntings are to be heard on this album, this track is probably their poster child — though I’m still dropping it a place or two for setting such a mysterious scene only to end on the line Come back and I’ll tell you more. Absolutely unforgivable.
16. And He Built Him a Boat (Hubardo, 2013)
Hooray for eerie tremolo motifs so majestic they hold the floor as a chorus stand-in, and hooray for the melodious theatrical magic Toby+backing vocalists work throughout this song’s verses. I love how much presence this song has — as a narrative-driven concept record, Hubardo is very striking on the level of individual images and broader atmospheres, but this (along with “The Black Stone”) is the only piece I can picture as a start-to-finish scene: hooray for such a vivid portrait of our Poet scurrying around his arcane errands! Hooray for how much contour the drums add to the song — if I haven’t said as much already, the pairing of Keith Abrams and Ron Varod on drums and guitar respectively was a real coup for Kayo Dot, and although it’s hard to imagine them at home in the current line-up, both brought a vast amount of personality to Hubardo in particular.
Anyhow, “And He Built Him a Boat” is a baller. Take that phantom out of the opera and stick him in a forest, or on a quayside! I love how much blockbuster immediacy Toby brought to this one, not that you’d mistake it for anyone else’s work. Almost the best Kayo Dot single (stay tuned for that one later).
15. Gemini Becoming the Tripod (Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue, 2006)
The majority of my blurbs for the 2021 version of this list were absolute dogshit and I feel sorry for anyone who read them, but on revisiting this charming entry for “Gemini Becoming the Tripod”...
Toby Driver's Artaud hour for occult vocal torture and supreme tentacle love strain is equal parts superparody of whatever your turtlenecked latte sipping AnCo coldplaying hipster imagines avant garde metal to be and also midkey bitchin fantastic. I don't know if KD have any other track that owns its ridiculousness quite so well as this one, and it helps that the section in question in sandwiched between a gorgeous instrumental opening that sums up early Dot perfectly in and of itself (Mia really was the biz huh) and a nice off kilter distortionmelt guitar outro that is yes, indeed, heavy and ended up being the project's farewell to metal for many years. This is a heavy song. it contorts and wretches and is too much but also exactly right and it is probably a good thing that Toby doesn't have any other pieces that tried to repeat it. ideal choke anthem.
...I find myself with nothing whatsoever to add.
14. Immortelle and Paper Caravelle (Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue, 2006)
I don’t think it’s controversial to call this one the most straightforwardly lovely piece of music on the list. “Immortelle and Paper Caravelle” is so gauzy and gentle that if you so much as tried to hug it, it would likely disappear into the aether, and yet who wouldn’t try! It taking almost ten minutes for one verse, a handful of diffuse chords and a couple of choice trumpet lines is perfect introduction to how Dowsing uses near-empty space to allow for the maximum resonance of a couple of core ideas Talk Talk-style, and as with that band, texture and resonance do perfect work holding the floor for most of the track because the core ideas are so wonderful.
The only thing separating it from Dowsing’s best is the lack of eerie misgivings or a hint that All Is Not As It Seems, but then again it does anchor those later tracks to have something so understated and blissed in reserve - after “Gemini Becoming the Tripod”’s initial demon conjuring, “Immortelle” gives the album a strong emotional bedrock and sets the scene for all sort of mischievous hauntings to come.
13. Thief (Hubardo, 2013)
Well, if “Clelia Walking” tiptoed cautiously through the woods, “Thief” sprints like a loon on a moonlit quayside, his arms and legs a mess of frenzied angles no one can bear to look at long, and his trajectory nigh unintelligible. But the speed! You will not catch him!
So, uh, yes — this song is a ridiculous blast and showcases a bunch of the proggiest bullshit Kayo Dot ever laid down at its most accelerated and entertaining. It is incredible that Toby drops his choicest “Moon River” croon (and rested by the river where / he could see the stone) in a song this berserk only to have it slap the bloody biscuit. Blam. Nothing lasts, nothing is reprised, but every blast-off is engaging and every melody is resonant. The song’s unstructured rush somehow works in its favour — not ‘somehow’; that’s pure momentum for you -- and it preserves enough visceral impact to land HIGH in my ranking of Hubardo to this day. Hooray.
On a side-note, I can vividly remember when this dropped as a single and I sent it along to my aspiring music student pal in the middle of his peak Periphery phase, only to have it declared pure awfulness. Is this the reason we haven’t spoken in years? Don’t let Kayo Dot steal your friendships. Or do! What do I care?
12. Gamma Knife (Gamma Knife, 2010)
It has been more places than I can be bothered to count since the last song on Gamma Knife; lest there be any doubt, the title-track is by far the strongest cut that record has to offer and the main thing elevating it from an endearing odds-and-ends deal. Ghostly chamber Toby has never sounded better! That piano/guitar interplay provides the most delicate of lattices for a vocal performance that waxes disembodied and inspires an irresponsible number of chills.
I’ve floated some version of this bit for several tracks already (and, uh, guess what my pick for #1 will be), but this song is a borderline tangible nexus of dusty forgotten objects and half-memories (*was it a dream?*) and a faint lingering shiver that says that *something* is out there, nanometres beyond the visible spectrum yet already further into our world than it should be. This is a perfect haunting. Hubardo ventured into similar territory on “The Second Operation” and Toby’s solo work certainly has a lot in the same vein, but this track remains a high watermark for his personal supremacy of spook and is one of many Kayo Dot moments where I look back to where my own taste has taken me in the last few years and realise how deeply formative it’s clearly been.
11. A Pitcher of Summer (Choirs of the Eye, 2003)
Maybe there’s a semblance of double standard in how I bitched about how tame “Wayfarer” is, only to put “A Pitcher of [fucking] Summer” 10+ places higher? Is the first half of this track not the most user-friendly daydream section on the whole of Choirs and arguably the ‘safest’ thing Kayo Dot ever did before Coffins on Io?
Why, yes — but have you *heard* how the second half zaps that afternoon teatime full of concentrated stardust and has the entire household levitating ten feet above the flowerbeds? I love how leftfield that midway twist is, and it’s glued to the first section by around ten seconds of bloody silence, an endearing and, for me, well-placed amateur beat amidst Choirs’ otherworldly ambitions — something about that transition gives the record as a whole a real DIY foot in the door and helps keep it in the human realm. (None of that on glossy, starry “Wayfarer”.)
That section is probably the peak of Toby’s Jeff Buckley-adjacent performances, but by the time he gets to the perfectly-timed final screams, he’s transcended into his own space. I used to have this song ranked even higher (it made the podium last time!), but I’ve come down to earth a little on how much I love the second half vs. the first and how much more certain other Kayo Dot tracks offer as a whole. Still, this one is precious.
10. Calonyction Girl (Coyote, 2010)
Most of Coyote jettisons clear structural boundaries as it comes apart in a pit of dread, yet “Calonyction Girl” starts the album out with by far its most streamlined progressions. It’s as uncomfortable as anything else on the record, especially as a cold open, but it’s by far the easiest track to ‘follow’ — and what I’m really driving at there is that the last three minutes or so strike an extraordinarily specific take on a funeral trudge (rendered in 5/4 lest we get too comfortable) to cement a top 10 placement with no further questions asked.
I love everything about how that end section is constructed, the elegant tone of the violin clinging to some sense of dignity while the once-a-bar plunge of the brass has all the uneasiness of an ailing line on a heart rate monitor, compounded by the wearying inhale/exhale effect of Toby’s belaboured monosyllables. Language breaks down (good luck piecing what on earth he sings over that final run without the lyrics), the passing of time is reduced to a sluggish war of attrition on the senses, and just for once – all too early, never to be taken for granted – the broadly harrowing experience of a Coyote listen lends itself to something more traditionally cathartic.
9. The Awkward Wind Wheel (Blue Lambency Downward, 2008)
Let the fact that this is our second top ten placement transcend everything I’m about to say, but it never fails to send me how the rough ‘n’ tumble chamber rock cacophony seems to match every one of the allegations of musty graduate frittering that were levelled against this album on a superficial and hugely unhelpful basis. For a few outsized seconds, this song could just as easily be the product of a flop dramatic auteur straight out of college and destined for a lifetime of off-Broadway snatch-and-grabs, but phwoar boy does that assessment fail to reckon with the absurd melodic precision that holds this most roughshod of Kayo Dot tracks!
The way it flirts back and forth between dissonance and harmony is some of the deftest hijinks you’ll hear from just about anyone, and it’s amazing just how damn CATCHY those user-friendly phrases are. We’re obviously all here for Mia’s song-crowning violin line at The Point when it all comes together, but the song’s connective sections have so many guitar or woodwind licks that have been stuck in my head for years at this point. It’s fun track! It’s very all-go in a way that leaves very little to suggestion or negative space in the way of most great Kayo Dot tracks, but for that specific reason I love how it marks a moment of quirky punctuation in the otherwise sinuous scheme of Blue Lambency Downward — and I also love how much of a gorgeous skronky banger it is on anyone’s terms. No more adjectives. It satisfies me a lot that the drums under the violin line at the apex resemble the image of the song title very closely. Could it have been called anything else? Perhaps.
8. The Necklace (Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, 2021)
Although the Kayo Dot fix tends to be based on aesthetics, mysterious spaces, on eerie atmospheres, “The Necklace” is one of their rare moments that go above and beyond and dish out something emotionally consuming on terms that are all too easy to articulate: this song captures exactly what it’s like to see the light at the end of the tunnel disappearing out of sight and the feel darkness closing in.
It doesn’t demand to be approached as a lurid piece of fiction (which is fun enough on the other Moss... songs, but has its limits), but goes straight for the jugular: Toby’s performance might be my favourite he’s ever done with harsh vocals, and I love how he weaponises suspense throughout this track, and how the brighter melodic progression in the second half floats a sense of release that his strangled vocals brutally undermines. There’s also the context of how this was written about a fan who took their own life, which isn’t the basis for its greatness but does afford a certain weight that most Kayo Dot eschews in favour of suggestion (see the “Whisper Ineffable” blurb for more on this).
This is one of the most discomforting songs on the list, but it’s too powerful not to rank this high. See below for a real-time response to the track that I found pretty affecting in how it reckons with those themes — this song may be dark in context, but I can fully believe that it’s horrible outside of it:
7. The Manifold Curiosity (Choirs of the Eye, 2003)
Alright, I know many (most?) consider this one to be Choirs of the Eye’s climactic centrepiece and/or the official best Kayo Dot song, but hear me out here. I absolutely adore everything about the track’s first half: it may be the most harmonically incurious thing Toby ever released under Kayo Dot, it may place so much weight on major 7ths and dreamy acoustic strumming that it could pass as a Sweet Trip song (you tell me how much piss I’m taking here), but it hits every one of its generously telegraphed beats to perfection and still stands as one of *the* gorgeous linear builds of all time. That clarinet solo reigns supreme!
However! Hmm. The second half is almost as stunning in its way, but I find its slow descent into clamour more engaging than the eruption that ultimately terminates it and have never quite gotten behind how much hand-holding the song’s extremely streamlined bipartite structure offers relative to the murky depths it attempts to drag us to. There’s something a little... sanitary? Perfunctory? Overly adjacent to the Do Make Say Thinks, Oceansizes and [The] Slowest Runner [in All the World]s of the world (who I do like a lot!) and comfortably wrapped up in a post-rock sphere that I typically love early Kayo for subverting and transcending? I dunno, at this point “The Manifold Curiosity” is kind of old friend I earnestly love but cannot think of a single fresh topic of conversation to raise with.
And that’s fine. Those friends are great -- but there are plenty of Kayo Dot tracks that still cough up fresh depths for me, and this ain’t a contender for their best. Doesn’t mean your favourite act could do any better if they tried!
6. Amaranth the Peddler (Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue, 2006)
I mean, say what you like about negative space, but “Amaranth the Peddler” is on another level and simply cannot hear you over its faerie-addled hangover pangs. This is absolutely not the kind of song you (or at least I) hear for the first time, nod along to, and project noises at to the tune of instant classic, but on a few iterations and with a deeper sensitivity to Dowsing Anemone’s wider atmosphere, and this is the final frontier of the album’s relocation of Talk Talk’s distinct plane of spiritual ascension to the more tangible realm of drainpipes, peeling wallpaper, draughts, and unbanishable patches of shadow. Not only does it get royally stranded in the aether, but that zany clarinet accompaniment in the song’s sole verse seems to herald the tone Toby and Mia would plunge even further to on Blue Lambency Downward - did that album really switch tracks, or was Kayo Dot always headed to pastures zanier? Who can say. This song stands like one giant, endearing, provocative cryptic dig, fourteen minutes for one verse bookended by minute after minute of elusive melodies and background scratchings, all of which probably approximates what ghosts experience when they hear ECM jazz (the good, eerie stuff, not the uberconsonant Eurobeige). I would go on, but at the end of the day, there really is no overstating how, despite being so sparse and so spangled, every last note counts.
5. Zlida Caosgi (To Water the Earth) (Hubardo, 2013)
If there’s one throughline for this whole list, it’s that Kayo Dot’s strongest work tends to be that which plays with negative space, that teases dimensions out of reach, that trusts in its atmosphere to consider structural progressions few would consider intuitive, and that uses maximalist blow-outs as the icing on the cake rather than the main event. This is the band of winding, cryptic intrigue and subtle atmospherics, and if you’re willing to extend a little patience and let them lead you off the beaten track, they’ll offer up one revelation after another. However, go in expecting those avant garde credentials to be borne out in thrilling, affirmative, cathartic Action, and you’ll end up more lost than any of us. This is not a project that Gives It To You Straight.
But not on “Zlida Caosgi”! This song is a fucking zinger, it is a thrill addict’s glut of rocket fuel; it sets all of Gandalf’s fireworks set off in one go. To this day, the section where the delicate piano runs give way to a surge of exploding synths, gives me the “Strawberry Fields Forever”/”Starless” effect where I’m left awestruck at the fact that another human would ever think to put rhythm, melody and timbre into those particular shapes. There are a few other explosions of gratification in the Kayoverse (”The Awkward Wind Wheel”, “The Manifold Curiosity”, “The Assassination of Adam”), but none of them touch this for pure adrenaline or dumb fun. What a beautiful rush. Shivers.
4. Aura on an Asylum Wall (Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue, 2006)
Well, if much of Dowsing Anemone feels labyrinthine because you end up lost in empty space, this one is all the more so because of the density of things happening! It reminds me a lot of The Pax Cecilia’s “The Tomb Song” in many senses (probably that band’s best track?) but there are too many sly twists at play here to get it confused with anything else: I adore how callously that mess of a noise coda shrugs off the elegance and painstakingly ratcheted increments of tension in the final build. It’s perhaps the most intricate arrangement in the early Kayo Dot canon by that point, but Toby couldn’t help but remind us that things had changed since Choirs and that he was far more into eroding the forms than cementing them.
Quite right, and there’s a fun compare/contrast to be drawn between “Aura” and “The Manifold Curiosity” to that end. For all “Aura” is absolutely Dowsing’s keynote track in terms of positive space, it could hardly be more disdainful of linear grandeur, and so the journey really is its own reward here.
No elaboration necessary for the rest of the track - just you try *not* to be drawn in by that string of intuitive rhythms and strong melodies! The switch the track makes from 6/8 to a more frantic 5/8 is music theory in practice 101 for ye olde insufferable precocious musos (and I should know! I was (and remain?) one of them). 10/10 title image too, and perhaps Mia’s finest hour of them all.
3. Symmetrical Arizona (Blue Lambency Downward, 2008)
Paha, I love how this song lands as a closer: one spellbinding, haze-churning, Moment of Revelation-portending guitar solo that summons the entire band to wade in for a single verse where everything is halfway consonant and mostly makes sense, except it doesn’t because Toby, Mia and the Kayo Dotos promptly embark on a long, winding outro that leads to the End and nowhere else? It’s like if Blue Lambency Downward had a protagonist and they had spent the entire album wandering through an increasingly surreal set of tableaus in fantasia forest, only to finally stumble upon a banquet of faeries that have somehow been at the root of their blundering reverie all this time. Insight, closure and nourishment are at hand! But before they can get too comfortable, someone leads them by the hand down a secret trail under increasingly tangled branches, and just before the all-important answer to who even knows what question can be whispered into their ear, everything ends in a puff of unresolved hocus-pocus. Of course it bloody does.
Musically, the guitar solo is of course lovely (*what* a great tone!) and the smokey texture of the vocals when it all kicks off is maybe the best Toby sounded on any of the earlier Kayo records, but the more time has passed, the more I relish how this album’s glimpses of some uncanny, unknowable intrigue invite you to get lost in it and stay there. “Symmetrical Arizona” is forever blessed for the way it teases a concrete shape to things only to pivot to the same elusive flair that we ultimately know and love Kayona Dadootsa for. Bless.
2. Marathon (Choirs of the Eye, 2003)
I’m really scraping the bottom of the barrel for hot takes after putting a majority share of Choirs of the Eye (aka the consensus pick for Kayo Dot’s best) in the top 10, but “Marathon” is the album’s dark horse and the most consistently overlooked track despite being, y’know, the first thing anyone hears when they hit play.
I want to say I get it: using the Heavy Bit to set up the Ambient Bit rather than as a central climax is the kind of whiplash the band’s early metal/post-rock audience must have struggled with, and there’s something to be said about the ins and outs of using a section that abyssal as an intro statement without doubling down on it stylistically.
...but I don’t get it at all. That ambient stretch is brilliant! I cannot get enough of how that chasmal doom intro – perhaps the most lurching, nonlinear and overall frightening heavy section on the record – lumbers off a cliff and leaves us trapped in some eerie liminal freefall, assisted by absolutely choice ambient chords and tones. Perhaps more than any other moment in Kayo Dot’s discography, this was a huge formative influence for me — even more than “The Second Operation”, it pre-empted my whole obsession with Harold Budd’s The Pavilion of Dreams (now one of my favourite albums period) and goodness knows how many other wonderful things. Even the poem is great — I normally think of this project’s poetic overtures as set dressing at best and endearing at worst (see “Don’t Touch Dead Animals” down below), but this one is perfectly placed and elevates the piece on its own terms. I love how the soft delivery brings it to a close, especially in those final lines:
Our eyelashes weaken with a weight that is sweet and fine And this feels like frogs and spiders in the sweet outside Tell me why world, unfathomable and good The beauty of everything is infinite and cruel An airplane, a puppet, an orange, a spoon A window, and outside Stars and the moon
By this point, the instrumental reverie is so out of space and time that Toby could probably say anything at all and have it land, but those words are still inseparable from the piece to me.
So that’s why I love this song. Uh, anyway, the transition from the heavy section into the ambient one has always reminded me a little of Rush’s “Jacob’s Ladder”, and I hate that association even more than you do even if it is potentially their best track. (Rush’s, that is. This is the second best Kayo Dot song, in case you forgot!) What was that about being short of hot takes?
1. The Antique (Choirs of the Eye, 2003)
Facing a colossal, predictable level of fatigue at rounding off far too many words about a band whose appeal is at times far too elusive for humble description, I’m praying that any of the blurbs you may have skimmed so far have conveyed enough of the intrigue, fear or respect for strange old things kept in dusty attics, of a very specific thrill of the unknown that comes from the eeriness of losing something and then finding it again but not as you expected (be the experience the retrieval of a banal trinket long since starved of daylight, or a full cosmic horror revelation) that it comes as no surprise whatsoever for “The Antique” to be my favourite Kayo Dot song.
Though linear, this one’s structure does not so much build as it lumbers along and collapses into itself, and the motions it goes through are terrifying. Should it be so strange to hear downtuned guitars command actual fear in 2026? How do the growls at around 6:20 sound so choral? I can’t begin to describe how colossal this track sounded when I caught Kayo Dot playing it as part of their full-album Choirs of the Eye tour in 2023. It still floors me to hear that one absurd minute when the entire track snaps midway and Toby vomits up the heaviest slugger of his career (probably, “Floodgate” is the only challenger), only to bring Sigur Ros (of all bands) to mind as the band move into an otherworldly, album-capping coda.
This is the music of things lost, warped, and found once more in shapes no one would have imagined. No single artist embodies the sound of curiosity itself, but Kayo Dot come so close and take that appeal to such extremes, complete with all the dreads and misgivings familiar to the terminally curious, that I’ll be coming back to them for as long as I have ears.
…and that’s the end of Kayo Dot — for now! If that’s not enough for you, refer yourself to another Toby Driver project (such as maudlin of the Well, Alora Crucible, his solo work or Tartar Lamb) and stay tuned for more coverage. Back soon!
this is such a phenomenal undertaking - looking forward to reading it in greater detail after work today
Quite superb stuff! Doubt Kayo Dot will ever be my favorite band, there definitely outside my wheelhouse, but this has been the kick I need to do some exploring (I've heard a few of their albums before).