Chris Sharp, The Wire magazine (GB)
Lokai’s debut album continues a brilliant run of form for the Megoallied Mosz label. This Austrian duo, comprising Florian Kmet and Stefan Németh, centre their spare, measured explorations on the many sounds of the electric guitar: leaving openended arpeggios hanging in elegantly distressed space and garlands of feedback intertwined with fiendishly processed electronic noise. The juxtaposition of unhinged sonics with professional attention to detail is invigorating throughout – check out the molten, wayward electricity smeared wantonly across the stark, monochrome spaces of “Taora Atoll”, or the interplay between the swelling skeins of guitar and the measured subbass modulations on “Hellen”. The album’s centrepiece is the sprawling, multidimensional “Chuuk”, a rolling, gathering cloud of amorphous sound, which thickens gradually from almost nothing to a piercing climax before subsiding like slo-mo skyscraper demolition into fraught, tense silence. Not easy listening but enthralling all the same.

RM2, Vital Weekly #490 (NL)
Lokai is a new duo of Florian Kmet and Stefan Németh, both Austrians. Kmet was unknown to me but Németh is mostly known from playing in Radian, and he also co-runs the Mosz label on which this album is released. Kmet plays guitar, and Németh adds all the electronics on ‘7 Million’, a short album with 6 explorations of combining the two. There is sometimes a heightened awareness of each other at play here, as the plucking of the guitar sometimes breaks through the electronic frame in delicate ways, but also other moments where it seems that Németh went out by himself, almost forgetting his partner. It could be considered improv in the sense of a lot of Erstwhile releases with their duo recordings, but it holds too many little melodic or at least song-structured elements to fall into that scene. Actually, although I know it’s not the most original comparison, it’s much closer to Fennesz, when the guitar sounds are looped and the electronics float all around it, like on the last part of ‘Mikrostekon’. Best tracks are those where the guitars are not recognizable as such, as on ‘Chuuk’, a 13-minute almost-noise epic. Looking forward to hearing more from them.

Bleed *****  De:Bug (D), 2005
Manchmal wäre man froh, wenn man nicht so eine Schlampe wäre, die Promozettel lieber dazu benutzt, dass Tische nicht wackeln oder so, denn ich hab keine Ahnung wer Lokai sein mag. Die Musik aber ist durchaus bezauberndes Slomogitarren und sonstige Instrumente. Zeug, das perfekt klingt, wenn man selber am liebsten vor Hitze zerfließen möchte, dabei aber wirklich keinen Kitsch gebrauchen kann, sondern ab und an auch schon mal die pure Elektronik brummen hören will. Intensiv und gewaltig, zart und zerzauselt. Gut gemacht Mosz.

TERZ (D)
Den Wienern gelingt etwas sehr seltenes, nämlich ihre instrumentellen Texturen aus Gitarre und Elektronik so dicht und gleichsam offen zu halten, dass es einem, wie Ebbe und Flut, ganz natürlich vorkommt.

C.S., Black (D)
“7 Million” bietet genau die Musik, die man sich gut als intelligente Alternative zur sogenannten Fahrstuhlmusik vostellen kann – und das ist alles andere als negativ gemeint. Ob nun als Musik in einer Ausstellung, beim spätnächtlichen Arbeiten oder doch beim bewußten, aber der Entspannung dienenden Zuhören ist das was Florian Kmet(Superlooper) und Stefan Németh(Radian, Synapsis) in (leider nur) 37 Minuten bieten, nahezu eine Punktlandung. Zwischen leicht angekratzten Gitarren und sich imemr wieder selbst umstrukturierter Elektronik schwebt etwas in der Luft, was einerseits fragil wirkt, aber schon mal eine Mauer aus Loops, Soundfetzen un d Gliches ausufern kann. Sehr schön.

Eugenio Maggi, chain D.L.K. (I)
Lokai is an Austrian duo formed by Florian Kmet (guitars) and Stefan Németh (electronics and additional guitars), the former being a classical trained guitarist with several collaborations in his curriculum, the latter better known for being a member of Radian (by the way, what an amazing band… one of the most thrilling live sets I’ve ever seen). “7 Million” is a quite varied work, which doesn’t necessarily add anything new to experimental guitar+electronics-based composition (it’d be honestly hard to do that, anyway), but turns out to be a successful work of synthesis. From the dreamy plucking and loops of “Histoire ds” to the intimidating distortion of “Mikrostekon”, “Taora atoll” and “Chuuk” to the droning release of the almost Ambarchi-an ending “Hellen”, the album skillfully alternates suspension and aggression, in a troubled intimism which is well portrayed by the layout pictures: the sea is close at hand, but the sun is not always shining.