Kidkanevil attempts something really dangerous…

Kidkanevil's new album is a strange one and no mistake. Opening with ‘Bakusha 1’, featuring a slowed down voice basically telling us that our whole lives are worthless against a background of a low industrial hum, the rest of this album’s a little a soundtrack for some kind of weird Japanese sci-fi movie. Dubsteppy beats, atmospheric samples (sound du jour ‘8-bit’ makes an appearance all over the place too) and the odd moment of utter mayhem make this an album to play late at night with the curtains drawn, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the go and just your own troubled thoughts for company.

Dark and deranged ‘Drunken Master’ (track 6) is clearly the product of a damaged mind…music to serial kill by? Skittering 8-bit samples and Japanese cymbals kick the track off before the whole things descends into maniacal laughter and more random bleeps. What does it all mean? “I was watching a lot of Japanese cinema, listening to a lot of out-there, classical music, going a bit loopy really,” Kidkanevil explains “that was the starting point”. Ahhhh, right…er...now I get it.

You have to wait until track 11, ‘When Doves Bounce’, until you hear something resembling a, let’s say, conventional tune. Some more of those slowed down vocals set off with pounding (Japanese?) drums and squelchy synth sounds…the sort of thing they’d have on a remake of Blade Runner perhaps? It all goes decidedly oddball again with ‘The Whistling Of Wintry Wind / Lantern 2 / Bokusha 3’ (that’s all one track by the way) which is just like being locked in a Japanese cinema with a bunch of escaped lunatics, a pair of turntables and some obscure crate digger’s record collection (and I should know, it’s happened to me on more than one occasion).

You can’t accuse this record of being boring or conventional, which is a real positive in this bland age I guess. Whether there are that many people out there who want to listen to 21^st century schizoid J-noise is another matter. A brave record to make though and well worth a listen if you want to expand your musical horizons.

Basho Basho is out on First Word Records on January 18^th 2010…a free Psychotherapist comes with the first 500 copies (actually I made that bit up…or did I? Whoohahahahahaha…darn it I’ve been listening this record too much myself now).