Paso Viejo Take Us on a Post-Rock Journey With a Trickster Spirit on “Kitsune”

PasoViejo5_sm — Paso Viejo, photo courtesy the artists

Paso Viejo is an Argentinian band that mixes shoegaze soundscaping with post-rock structure and the textures and sensibility of native folk music styles. The result, at least in the “Kitsune” single, is music that sounds like it’s embodying elements of a landscape with branches of trees and grass blowing in a gentle wind—that level of detail that you take in but do not individually dissect yet intuitive understand. “Kitsune” is the Japanese word for fox and as the song progresses into moodier realms for tone and minor scale progressions it drifts further into more direct sonic movement like a fox meandering its way through a landscape shifting shape to suit its trickster goals as the animals are attributed with getting to in Yokai folklore. Later in the song the music becomes more intense and distorted perhaps representing the climax of one of the kitsune’s many caprices. Whatever the direct inspiration, the song is evocative and cinematic and goes beyond the usual tropes of the instrumental rock and post-rock genre by being more than pretty sounds and some conventionally solid musicianship. Paso Viejo are, after all, sonic storytellers whose language is the emotional content of their compositions. Listen below and follow Paso Viejo at the links provided.