Top Partner

DVD Releases

Beschreibung
Details
NFO-Text
NFO
Sponsor

K-X-P-K-X-P-2010-KALEVALA

Darsteller: -

artist : K-X-P
album : K-X-P
year : 2010

genre : Electronic
label : Smalltown Supersound
cat# : STS181CD

source : CDDA
encoder : LAME 3.97 -V2 --vbr-new
quality : VBR/44.1/Joint

size : 50,5 MB

01. Elephant Man 04:49
02. Mehu Moments 06:55
03. 18 Hours (Of Love) 04:43
04. Labirynth 05:35
05. Aibal Dub 05:50
06. Pockets 07:23
07. New World 04:55
08. Epilogue 03:39

43:49

Some music resists characterization, such as the
self-titled debut from the quixotically named K-
X-P. The Finnish sorta-trio comes with good bona
fides: two drummers, Anssi Nykänen and Tomi
Leppanen plus Annie producer/co-songwriter Timo
Kaukolampi, and all are good friends with the
inimitable DJ duo Optimo, who invited them to
perform at one of their last Sunday club nights at
Glasgow's Sub Club earlier this year.

To an extent, you can understand K-X-P's appeal to
dance floor-friendly artists; their music is
incredibly rhythmic, their grooves-- paranoid dark
disco and motorik-- deep. The pulsing beat that
kicks off "Mehu Moments", for example, is so
nerve-wracking that you can practically see a
red-flashing siren while you're listening to it.
And yet this record manages to sound loose and
off-the-cuff, positively alive and experimental.
New elements within these eight compositions seem
to arise out of thin air, like the ripples of
melody that erupt throughout "Mehu Moments" or the
streaks of weeping keyboard sounds stretching out
"Aibal Dub". Sometimes it all sounds delightfully
improvisational.

Thing is, though, these songs are way too self-
contained to be the result of compiled-together
jam sessions. While K-X-P can get a little rote
and samey-sounding at times, every song feels
compact despite their running time (only the
brightly-humming "Epilogue" makes it under the
four-minute mark). That structural conciseness
could ostensibly be attributed to Kaukolampi's pop
pedigree; thing is, though, it's pretty much the
only discernible trace that any member of K-X-P's
worked with more conventional forms of music.

The two most conceivably "straightforward" cuts
here, "18 Hours (of Love)" and "Pockets", are also
the two most menacing. The former uses Gary
Glitter drums and low-bellowed vocals to create
what sounds like a Satanic romantic ballad, while
the latter's spangled disco touches are offset by
maniacal post-punk howls. Take a listen to
Kaukolampi's rework of "Pockets" featuring redone
vocals from Annie herself, then, and you'll wonder
whether or not there's a big beating pop heartbeat
(not "Heartbeat") lying under each and every song
on this album, which is a shape-shifting puzzle
that is as fun to pick apart as it is to simply
take in and enjoy.

Larry Fitzmaurice, August 2, 2010

http://k-x-p.net