A Prophecy of Dynamic Sounds and Captivating Musical Shapes and Colours:  Interview with Toby Driver of Kayo Dot

April 25th, 2020

This Covid-19 Virus has drastically changed our world, in every sense of the word.  For music of all genres, concerts, performances, and everything with it, has been put on hold.  I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen to our serenity-filled world of Extreme Metal and music, but I’m hopeful as I can be that we can get back to something even more special down the line.

I had the chance to catch Kayo Dot in September of last year in San Diego, California.  Although I had intended to interview founder, multi-instrumentalist, and fantastic songwriter/musician Toby Driver at the show, I wasn’t able to that day, and these questions that you’ll see here were from the month of October of last year.  Bring in Covid-19 and the band on tour earlier this year and had to be cut short due to the virus, I finally was able to get a hold of Toby, and he was more than kind enough to do this interview.  We discussed mauldin of the Well, the transition to Kayo Dot, his musical and writing style, how difficult it is for bands to get noticed while touring, and much more:

Metalchondria:  I wanted to say first and foremost, thank you tremendously for your time.  I don’t like to talk rumors, drama or anything like that, I just absolutely love discussing musical technique, theories, technicality within the notes, and so on in that vein.  I would like to ask you first:  What’s your musical influences and Metal background growing up; in terms of how you got started playing various instruments, any music you studied in college or after, and how you got into Metal generally?

Toby Driver:  Haha, that's cool. I might say that's what I like discussing the least. But let's try this out! So first off, I got into what could be called metal, or metal-adjacent, with stuff like Guns N Roses, Scorpions, Bon Jovi, and Def Leppard when I was too young to even think about collecting records. MTV was my babysitter. Then around age 11, I started being aware that I could collect my own tapes and really started that with Appetite for Destruction and Metallica's ...And Justice for All. Then the Seattle grunge boom happened, and I was swept up by that too, but I guess since metal already had taken a hold, it stayed. Anyway, I began playing music on clarinet at age 8, but when I got into high school, I felt extremely uncool with the clarinet and it didn't fit the music I liked, so switched to bass, guitar, and keys pretty much all at the same time. Drums a couple years later. I became able to record my own songs, playing everything. Cello in college. A few more later as I grew older. I tended to pick up things just because I wanted to use them on a recording of mine. But as I grew more professional, I eventually preferred to pass these roles off to actual experts.

I’m asking these questions to you particularly, because I feel alongside a group of Metal bands, I feel you’re one of the most eclectic, inspiring, and high-level Metal composers.  I started with maudlin of the Well first, around 2008, “Leaving Your Body Map” first, initially.  I felt to this day, an awe-inspiring perspective of how technical, deep, abstract, haunting and in the most positive description, uncomfortable the music made me feel.  I never knew “Stones of October Sobbing” could be so monstrous.  There’s a different, overall feel with how the intro is set, to when Jason Byron’s gutturals set in with your distortion.  The timing, structures, transitions, and movement within the melodies and dissonance, it was something I’ve rarely experienced hearing in my life.  Talk to me about how this song was composed, written and arranged?  And also, how the writing process for this album occurred, and I’ll be honest:  It’s still to this day my favorite record you’ve ever done, and one of the most important albums I’ve ever listened to.

Thanks! I'm glad you feel that way. I think the real magic in maudlin of the Well happened when more musicians were added, and we were able to work with more professional production value. There are plenty of MOTW demos before Bath and Leaving Your Body Map that are just awful, in my opinion. Occasionally we got lucky and hit the nail on the head, and I think when we did, those songs still stand up as something unique and magical. However, with Bath and Leaving Your Body Map, I think the participation of Sam Gutterman (drums) and Terran Olson (woodwinds and keys) made a huge, huge difference... they really brought everything that was missing. And our invaluable engineer and co-producer on those, Jim Fogarty. “Stones of October's Sobbing” is a great example of a song that crucially benefitted from Terran's input, because if you listen to my demo of that, which is just guitar, it's really missing so much color. Terran's responsible for all the woodwind ideas, and I think that might be the most interesting element of that song.

When I say a group of bands, I don’t admittedly know the groups and sounds of Metal you cater and listen to.  For me at least, this is the group I put in that category, in no order:

Anata

Ulcerate

Deathspell Omega

maudlin of the Well

Beyond Creation

Augury

Ad Nauseum

Lykeathea Aflame

Kayo Dot

If you haven’t heard of the other bands on this list, it’s completely fine of course!  But I bring them up, because each of those bands occurred after 2000, in which music before then I felt couldn’t be reached due to not being advanced enough in that regard.  If you’ve heard any of these bands or kind of know who they are, what do their types of Metal and musical styles resonate with you with?

Yeah, I know some of that stuff and agree that there is lot to find interesting there, but I would have been way more into all of that stuff 20-25 years ago. Metal these days is pretty boring to me because I feel that it suffers from a lack of originality and good ideas. Occasionally when something original arises, it's exciting for a minute, but eventually falls flat when it comes to compelling writing. I'm mostly into music that reaches me emotionally, and metal isn't doing that these days, it's mostly just one feeling or one group of feelings, and even then, metal is produced in such a way as to obscure the direct line of communication from one human to another. Volume, white noise, and reverb washes everything out. One metal-adjacent artist that is successful at reaching me emotionally would be Lingua Ignota, for example.

At least hearing Bath, and Leaving Your Body Map, one aspect of the music I at least felt, was this “cheerful melancholy” that it brought.  The notes, arrangements, soul-searching I embodied after each listen, I never knew you could make music like that.  During your time composing in maudlin of the Well, what did you feel in your life, in terms of how you saw colours, theories and how the riffs and instrumentation would take shape?

Well I was mostly into escapism, dreams, astral projection, just anything that would be a way out of this world. But I was attracted to color, for example the idea of the rainbow as something magical. The album Wildhoney by Tiamat was a major force in sanctioning how color, psychedelics, and kaleidoscopic nature could be related to dark metal instead of just psych rock. MOTW wouldn't have existed if not for that album, I'm sure. I was making music exploring those topics before Wildhoney, but it avoided metal entirely (that was my project called Spoonion). I came up with an alternate tuning for my guitar, probably by accident, which perfectly embodied this dreamy feeling that I was looking for, so I wrote a lot of songs using that tuning, and those are all really the backbone of Bath and Leaving Your Body Map. It's funny because Greg from MOTW recently hit me up and said he found an article on some guitar website where this younger Japanese solo artist/guitarist talks about his “dreamy tuning.” And it's almost exactly the same as my tuning. I'm not saying he knew my music at all, just that we seem to both have discovered something that's more than just subjective.

After maudlin of the Well, you started Kayo Dot, in which I feel there’s a real crossroads in which you wanted to write and express yourself after that, since Kayo Dot is the longest tenured band that you’ve been a part of and created.  What was the transition like between both bands, and did you have to learn certain musical aspects over, within yourself and how to create something completely different than previous?  Was Choirs of the Eye somewhat leftover with any material from maudlin of the Well, or just the sudden change between bands in terms of musical aspects and starting completely new?

Oh, that transition was immediate and basically nothing. Not a trial at all, in retrospect. Kayo Dot's first album, Choirs of the Eye, was supposed to be a MOTW album and it was almost completely finished when we decided to change the name. What drove that decision was the fact that MOTW's label, Dark Symphonies, had been showing signs that they weren't going to do much of anything to support the record when it was released, and I thought the record was too special to be buried. We were able to leave the label and take the record with us, although on not-so-great terms at the time. So, from that point, there was a reason to start fresh and come up with a new name. I think to create that album, I just had to push myself to work a bit harder. I didn't have to learn anything new other than how to be aware of and avoid my own inadvertent patterns. After Kayo Dot's second album, Dowsing Anemone with Copper Tongue, was when Kayo Dot started to become this thing where I forced myself to learn something very new and unfamiliar with each new record.

Hubardo was the more returning style to extreme Metal for Kayo Dot, especially with bringing Jason Byron back into the record.  The album was incredibly intense, “Vision Adjustment to Another Wavelength” and “The Black Stone” especially so.  That wave of carnage, dissonance and beautiful terror was felt in that album, partially away from the more experimentation the previous Kayo Dot records were before this album.  How did you meet up with Jason for this record, and talk with me about what Hubardo symbolized for you with Kayo Dot, and your songwriting?

Well, you're forgetting about Gamma Knife, which came right before that one, and is pretty brutal in terms of the avant black metal vibes. Hubardo was our tenth-anniversary album, so I had a goal to kind of include elements of everything from our past, and especially acknowledging the fact that we used to be maudlin of the Well, which is why Jason Byron does vocals at the beginning of “The Black Stone.” It was the first time we had done a concept album, so I had a lot of fun planning the structure of the album and writing the songs in terms of the story. Jason had told me his idea of the story at the beginning of the process, and then we worked on our respective roles simultaneously. The subject matter of the album is very symbolic to me and to the life of Kayo Dot, in fact. The album was a big ending, a big transition for Kayo Dot, and the theme of the story is a personal alchemical transformation into the pursuit of one's true will. It's the last album that some of our former, longstanding members appeared on. It made sense that everything from Kayo Dot after that would be very different.

Watching Kayo Dot live, seeing Ron Varod play guitar with you onstage was vividly insightful.  The way he bounced counterpoints, lead guitar and melody with you, it felt like I could see the musical and emotional bond you two share together.  Starting with you in Gamma Knife, what were your first impressions of Ron, and generally how you two write and play music together since?

My first impression of Ron was as he as a fan of Kayo Dot, he would come to every show we played. He had his own band, So is the Tongue, who were proggy, proficient, moody, and heavy, and eventually we shared a bill or two together. He started playing in Kayo Dot because he hustled me, haha. He had written me a message on myspace some years earlier and said, “hey if you ever need a guitarist, please ask me.” Eventually the need arose, and I remembered that he had offered. He still does this to other bands that he likes, like Glassjaw and Stabbing Westward. Hahaha. I guess it works sometimes, though. Anyhow, I haven't co-written very much with Ron, since I'm really the only writer in Kayo Dot. He's added his own parts to two of our songs so far though, which I was totally happy about. I think we play together super well and have good, hard-forged musical chemistry, but perhaps there's a little bit of baggage just from the long road we've had.

I also must say, the newest record Blasphemy, has been a truly remarkable experience to listen to, analyze and enjoy.  The production is crystal clear, able to hear each resounding note and melody, and the “road” being paved in this album, particularly the middle clean passage and choir like vocals in “Lost Souls on Lonesome’s Way”, the evolution within Kayo Dot that you create, deserves to be acknowledged and represented for us fans to exclaim.  The last minute or so of “The Something Opal”, with the lead guitar replaying that 4-5 note part in a hypnotizing like fashion, revealed a more subtle and journey leading type of feel that was wonderful to listen to.  How do you personally feel about this record after its’ release, and talk with me any writing session or so that resonated with you the most?

Thanks very much! I really appreciate your attachment to this record. This one was, well, how can I put it... a brutal experience. Not to get too longwinded, I put literally everything I had into Blasphemy, in terms of energy and passion but also in terms of finances, assets, materials. It was as if I was converting everything valuable that I had into my life, into Blasphemy. I have been thinking of it as a make-or-break record for Kayo Dot. It's only been out for 8 months, but it feels like forever, also probably because it was finished a whole year before its release. It's just been a long, exhausting process. I totally love the music and am completely happy with how the album turned out, but so far, I've been very disheartened that people haven't paid very much attention to this album at all. The music press hasn't cared about us for more than ten years now. I know that it deserves more than that. Anyway, I'm glad you mentioned “Lost Souls” because I think that was my favorite one to write, sing, and produce as well!

We talked a little bit after the show, about how difficult it is for unique and extreme bands to be taken seriously on a more profitable and larger profile scale.  You’ve been quite honest and vocal; about the difficulties it takes to make it “big.”  What are the hurdles out there that casual fans don’t know about in the touring life, and as redundant as it may sound, with your ever long knowledge of music, what’s a simple solution that you vision, that could at least help make the underground scene easier to manage?

Eh, I'm going to keep it simple in this answer and say that the biggest problem is GATEKEEPERS. The industry isn't run by artists, it's run by people who want to exploit artists. That's nothing new, it's always been like that. But you think you'd expect better from the underground, instead of a whole scene of sleazebag major-label wannabes. They champion artists that they don't even like that much because they see them as the most viable. But they become viable because the gatekeepers reserve all the resources for those artists. They're guilty of making safe choices for the chance of a bigger payday, and that's extremely damaging to our cultural health. There is no simple solution, because the problem there is captalism, quite a beast. If there could be one, actually simple-to-implement solution, I might say that it could be for Facebook and Instagram to eliminate their algorithm that hides unsponsored music posts and let those posts just exist organically. The fact that Facebook took their own usefulness away from regular musicians and reserved it for those with the most money (but they continue to completely monopolize the medium) has been extremely damaging to the survival of small acts. They could fix this with the push of a button.

From how openly you discuss musical subjects, sounds, life, and everything in else between, what does writing music personally mean to you?  You’re not the type of person who reads tablature, remembers how to play a typical Thrash riff, etc, at least the impression I get.  And I feel it’s a great aspect, because extreme music shouldn’t be comfortable to compose, express with, or to listen to.  After you create an album, whether from maudlin of the Well or Kayo Dot, what does that do for you personally and what does it dictate life for you moving forward?

Two things I guess – the positive thing is that it represents the power to create my own universe, and the power to change my timeline, in a way. For example, I'm fully aware that the next couple years of my life will be completely different dependent upon what music I compose, even in as basic of terms as genre. Composing is a way of seizing at least a bit of control. After I create an album, then, I follow the path forged by the life of that album. Or I go side-by-side with it, at least. 

But then the negative thing is that composing represents a trap and a curse. It's something that I dedicated my life to, perhaps unwisely. And I'm stuck doing it. Whenever I've tried to quit, I end up being compelled to write more and all my energy and focus just goes there, whether I like it or not.

And my last question, and once more, I could not thank you enough for even just reading these questions, let alone writing back to them, I’m extremely thankful.  What would you like for Kayo Dot to be moving forward?  With these many albums in your discography, would there be a different approach in the near future of how the band will take tours, write and release albums, and still be a live presence?

I apologize for taking so long to answer this interview, but with this last question, I'm glad I did, because my answer for this has recently changed. We did another tour in March that was cut short by COVID, but before it got cut short, it wasn't going how I had hoped, and it really fucked with the band's morale. I had been wanting, for some time, to expand Kayo Dot into a larger ensemble again, with 5 or even ideally 6 members, but hadn't done it yet due to financial restrictions. But I'd been saying that I didn't want to go on tour with Kayo Dot again as a smaller unit. Now with the past couple Blasphemy tours gone, I feel this even more strongly now. So, I don't think Kayo Dot will tour again until a tour looks viable enough to have a higher production value, and that means, bigger stages, more band members, etc. It might be as soon as next year, when there's another album, or it may be never. But the days of seeing Kayo Dot in the context that you saw in San Diego are over.