ALBUM REVIEW: Kylver – The Gobi

Released: 14.11.25

Nothing ever moves except the wind (a drone broils in the background), the dunes ebb and flow with almost glacial patience (a gentle acoustic guitar loops in), and hardly anything grows (but a pulsing bass) however the temperature swings wildly every day from dusk into dawn (each track is a cacophonic cycle of the chaos of diurnal change) in one of the most hostile environments on the planet.

For Kylver music is manifest in nature and there is nothing more viscerally manifested – yet oddly comforting – in nature than the Gobi Desert. The third long player from the Newcastle instrumentalists continues their exploration of long-form, narrative-driven instrumental music and is a masterclass in mixed-metal. The Gobi is an album of desolate fortitude. On 15-minute opener, The Frozen Sands, there is a surprising amount of space within the sound, possibly the influence of Pigs 7’s Sam Grant who produced. It’s unmistakably heavy even when it’s not, but there is a simultaneously crystalline aspect to the sound also; which means the levels are, well… weird. So, a monolithic doom riff is given equal importance as a delicate melody – at the same time – which is discombobulating to the listener but perhaps as intentionally unsettling as the myriad time signature and genre switches, from speed metal to doom to modern goth, that the longer form allows.

Elsewhere, Donghu is a mere pop interlude at six-and-a-half minutes, where church organs dual with a filthy stoner riff in dramatically scorched earth fashion, while Spirit Of The Hunt addresses the beastly folklore of the desert, an ode to The Green Griffin perhaps, that plays out like a soundtrack to Moby Dick if it was set on dry land.

Yet it’s not until closer, Allghoi, that Kylver really find their favoured gear in melodic doominess. Again, the overt tendency to riff, and riff hard and fast, is tempered in favour of a looping Hammond motif that provides the musical space again as we come full circle in musical styles. A five-minute outro then allows for a more improvised sounding medley of solos, drawn out musical melodrama and swirling riffola that rounds off an album of astonishing musical and thematic ambition.