Down With the Scene

by

kid606

Edit

so. hm.. not sure how you cut and paste music that virtually never repeats.

Ok. So yes, this is music that one cannot ignore in the background while trying to seduce someone over wine (whine) and cheese, just like elliot carter or george crumb makes horrible make-out music unless your partner is insane (good thing?). It falls into the category of more academic than club sounds. I love it.

Specific tracks and why:

track 7 is a duet of sorts with Mike Patton (duh, faith no more fame). The vocal processing is superb.

oh damnit i will not name any more tracks. they all have a certain charm. i feel that those unfamiliar with THE KID will need a steady diet of easier fodder to get them to this point...like how it took me three years to appreciate the genius of Atari Teenage Riot...dive a little deeper in electronica/noise every couple of months and you will either get it or not. please try.

those who wish to remain in the shadow of Aphex twin will die.

when i was about half the age i am now, i would buy nurse with wound albums on vinyl. they were to the 80's pretty much what kid 606 is to the new century: extremely clever sonic experimentation that stretched the boundaries of what folks at the time might consider music. in truth, nww (and others of that ilk) probably broke new ground upon which everyone from kid 606 to autechre to labradford might flourish, regardless of whether or not the aforementioned are immediately aware of their pedigree.

so i'd listen my new nurse with wound album and think, well golly, that's just some clever stuff. REALLY clever. yep. don't know that i've ever heard anything quite so clever as that. yep. and then i'd never listen to it again. why? well, as clever as it was, i never really identified an emotional core to any of the material that would speak to me in a way far deeper than the novelty of new sounds and arrangements. in hindsight, it was all brains, no heart; all ideas, no vision; all content but no context. down with the scene kind of strikes me as something like that - nurse with wound on coke in the post-d&b age.

it's not that i'm saying kid 606 lacks talent, that this shouldn't have been recorded (or for that matter that you won't even enjoy it for a while, cuz you might - even if it's only to show your posse just how wacky you are). exploration like this can fire the imagination of artists who might use kid 606's wall of beats, samples, and high-tech knob-twiddling as a foundation on which to build something a bit more meaningful (and yeah, probably diluting the aggression in the process for mass consumption - sorry). the kid even might be using this as a starting point for some future work that will make us see ourselves naked for the first time and accelerate human evolution. i dunno. i haven't even heard ps: i love you yet. i'm just trying to encourage the uninitiated to approach with a great deal of caution before they launch their credit card info into space. listen to the samples and then imagine yourself listening to the full tracks, six, maybe seven times. can you? okay. buy it.

but ditachi comes to mind as a safer starting point. still very inventive, nearly as effed up as down with the scene, but with a deep sorrowful streak expressed in a disturbing environment.