The Kiss That Took A Trip expands its strange universe on 'Horror Vacui'

There are artists who write songs, and then there are artists who build worlds. For nearly two decades, The Kiss That Took A Trip has belonged firmly to the latter camp. Operating more like a solitary architect than a conventional musician, M.D. Trello has spent years chiselling out a cosmos that lives somewhere between dreamstate fog, avant-garde abrasion, and widescreen emotional release. With 'Horror Vacui', he delivers yet another interior universe, one that feels like stepping into a long, winding corridor where each doorway leads to a different version of reality.

What began as a small addendum to the towering 'Victims of the Avantgarde' has mutated into something far larger, stranger, and more engrossing than its origin suggests. 'Horror Vacui' is a long-form odyssey, stitched together from movements that brush up against post-rock dread, shimmering ambience, pastel-toned easy listening, and bursts of chaotic noise. It functions like a retrospective of Trello’s entire creative life; twenty years of sonic language folded into one sprawling, ever-shifting piece.

The magic of The Kiss has always been its refusal to obey genre borders. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is the sheer confidence in the transitions. One moment, you’re drifting through soft-focus pads that glow like static on an old CRT; the next, you’re jolted awake by a jagged surge of guitar feedback, or a rhythmic pulse that feels like a heartbeat remembering it has work to do. It shouldn’t flow. And yet, impossibly, it does.

What impresses most is the intentionality in the disorder. This is a piece that grows, mutates, collapses, and rebuilds itself without ever losing its sense of direction. Even its most jarring shifts feel like they belong to a larger design. It’s a patchwork, yes, but sewn with the hands of someone who knows exactly how far thread can stretch before it snaps.

After technical setbacks, personal upheaval, and a hiatus that threatened to swallow the project whole, hearing Trello return with something this daring feels like a statement.

'Horror Vacui' is a panoramic tour through the project’s identity, a reminder of just how singular Trello’s catalogue has become, and a hint that even now, after years of wandering the fringes, he’s still discovering new ground to break.