Kinase Moves the Audio

Scientific moments, measured and compartmentalized, structure the expansive debut EP from Lansing Michigan’s Kinase Moves the Audio titled After silence Part 1. However, the aesthetic projected out of that structure is proto-science; it is alchemy in the sense that the band transforms regulated units of time and sound into something else, something that reaches beyond its natural parameters. The ubiquitous Ryan T. Johnson, producer of the EP, writer of much of the music, and band member, has taken up a project of ambiguity. Perhaps stemming from his academic interest in the sexual dimorphism of the amygdale, Kinase Moves the Audio transverses the categories of masculine and feminine. They are at times brooding, while other times deeply melodic. The music shuttles and negotiates the boundaries between mechanistic synthetics and the natural elements of Afro-Latin rhythms, which are themselves an instantiation of music as mestizo. Even the track titles reflect an interest in hybridity. Anthrobiotic, Idiology, and A Flawless Veil, are all titles that imply subtraction, compromise, and impurity.

“Fancy Cars and wine and women. Flashy clothes and gold and fashion. Now you sport a freshly sculpted face. Now you stand out in a crowd.”

The music is a garden bed expressing the pollination of an unmentionable number of influences from Maynard James Keenan to Bowie’s short introduction to Diamond Dogs. John Gapp’s vocals are impressive, exuding a noir romanticism and Aristotelian condescension. Modulated effects are woven through a mesh of organic drums and accenting Brass instruments. The orchestration skillfully assembles layer over layer without digressing into a cacophonous annoyance. This skill is a product of exceptional recording and production, as well as the ability of the numerous musicians to coalesce. Kinase Moves the Audio takes disparate parts and makes them one. The energy accumulated and exploded throughout this process is epic.

While it might be true that After Silence is conceptualized and anchored by a specific objective, the self-proclaimed genre that Kinase Moves the Audio operates within allows for an exceedingly large range of sounds. Mod prog—can we move on to post prog yet?—is a tricky genre to attach one’s self to. As a simple label it does little to describe the mode of music production, except to say that the songs are probably long, experiential, and mathematical in terms of composition. After Silence, while containing these components, is an EP that does not commit the foul sins of pretension and hyper-convolution. The aside comment being that prog often misunderstands the nature of music; it is not a collection of notes and time signatures; complication alone is not art. It should also not be contrived, having artificial meaning clumsily masking a clearly blank expression. Kinase Moves the Audio understands this and have sought to produce an opus that stands monolithically unified. The music is the album art. - FrederickFoxtrott.com

Local band takes cues from science lab to create sound
by Stephanie Goldberg, The State News
Published on November 19, 2008.
Local band Kinase Moves the Audio has many musical influences, from progressive rock to Latin and Afro-Cuban beats. The band, which manages to incorporate as many styles of music as it does members, got their name from a science class lecture about the enzyme kinase.

Ryan Johnson plays bass and founded the band. Other members include Ryan Jurado on drums, saxophone player and mathematics graduate student Andrew Cooper, djembe player Svenja Drebes, trumpet player and political science graduate student Rob Carroll, lead vocalist John Gapp, percussionist and zoology senior Ian Hudson, guitarist Jake McCartyh.

State News How would you describe your music?

Ryan Johnson: Science boogie.

Ian Hudson: Whenever we’re playing we can all talk about science because pretty much everyone is a science person in here. We have a progressive beat.

RJ And it really boogies.

IH When you combine the science majors with the progressive beat you get the science boogie.

SN How did Kinase Moves the Audio get its start?

RJ It started three years ago this spring. The beginning was me (and) a guy from Cooley Law School trying to sing. He was an awesome guy, he just is not cut out to be a singer. It kind of has come in spurts … It’s been mostly through Craigslist.

Andrew Cooper: Ryan creepily Facebook-stalked me and that’s how I got in the band.

RJ I knew he played sax and so I just outright asked him if he wanted to come jam with us.

Svenja Drebes: I was looking for a drum circle. I have never played in a band before and I was looking for other people that played djembe and I found an ad that said, “We are looking for a percussionist.” I thought, “It’s close, even though I’m not a percussionist.” And here I am.

SN What inspired you guys to come up with this genre?

Rob Carroll: As the newest person, I came in playing only jazz and listening primarily to jazz. I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but when you listen to the rest of our music you can find the intersections of what you were doing before and what the band is doing as it’s happening. It’s organic, at least for me as a player.

RJ I had been trying to go for a big band Latin feel almost the whole time, but when you’ve got three people just bass, drums and guitar, there’s only so much you can do, so you compromise — it’s going to be prog rock and we’ll try to insert some sort of exotic feel in there, but it’s really hard to do as three-piece.

Then we get lucky and find someone willing to play a nonconventional instrument, like Ian, and then you start to hear the more exotic influences in there.

SN Are you apprehensive at all to enter into an industry that is suffering with the current condition of the economy?

RJ I don’t think any of us walked into this ready to drop the rest of our lives and saying, “OK, let’s go make money doing this.” That being said, I think all of us would really have to question what we’re doing with our lives if someone all of a sudden said, “You can make a lot of money doing this.”

SN What if someone said that to you?

IH I’m down.

RJ If the price was right, I would have to say yes.

AC We talked about what happens if we want to go on tour, even though that’s not dropping everything.

RJ I think we’re all hoping it won’t happen suddenly and that we can kind of just ease into it.
- The State News