Someone recommended this to me, probably when I was looking for something that scratches my Feed Me itch, forever chasing that dragon.
What this sounds like is a lost Girl Talk album, bridging his mashup sensibilities with his Secret Diary-and-earlier-era noise nonsense. Kid606 has two sides that are in constant combat: a desire to move you and make you dance and smile with beats and references and combinations, and a punk side that violently rejects any notion of decency, that keeps pop at arm holding a disembodied arm's reach. The album is like an emotionally abusive boyfriend, seeming so nice, seducing your pants right off and then going on a shitbanging bender and telling you that he needs to go to vegas to blow off some steam and that he thinks things are getting too serious. And then he takes a shit on your rug.
There are loops you like, but they're not wielded for maximum dancability, they're wielded, bent, sometimes listenably, sometimes unlistenably, at the kid's whim. A groove gets laid down, but it gets chopped monumentally long. Not so long as to make you dance or get into a really good groove, but so long as to make you go "that's really longer than good taste would dictate". And how do you explain the physically painful whine running over the top of the second half of Kiddy Needs a New Pair of Laptops. Its mashup taken to geek show levels: how much subversion of pop can you handle? Enough to become bored? Enough to make your ears actually hurt in its name? Its no Metal Machine Music, but Kid606 seems to share a bit of the pop nihilism that spawned that project.
In case there was any doubt, consider the first three minutes of unlistenable noise that serve as gatekeeper to 606land. If you can't handle this, get the fuck out now, because we were not meant to be, says this gatekeeper. And then, having thoroughly banished any notion that he's pandering to anyone, Kid is free to indulge in some reasonably deft mashupery. So is Kid606 about being listenable, or is he performance art, smashing up pop? He tries to dodge either o these answers with closer This is Not My Statement that crushes Creep into dust and then grinds that dust under its heel over the course of 13 most-excruciating minutes.
At the end of the day, the album's more concerned with being art than it is being music, than with being listenable. And that's fine. As noise, I mostly admire it. If nothing else, it never ceases to surprise. As actual, listenable music? Barf. I hope you're happy Kid 3/5
You might like this if: you believe in music as art, and are willing to suffer for art. Pop is ground into your brain as a violent act, like some sonic Clockwork Orange variation. Sound fun?
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