Artist: KinkZoid
Album: Debacleclypse
Tags: Outsider, Progressive, Experimental, Avant, Neoclassical, LoFi, Collage,
WTF Qualities: Heavily effected vocals, strange transitions, variety of styles, lack of styles, mutation of styles
Year: 2009
Country: USA, Chicago
Link: http://kinkzoid.com/
Lack of expectations is a good place to start. I had a feeling KinkZoid was going to be strange, just from the name and the title of the album. So you can be assured of that, this is pretty fucked up music, but what are its special wtf qualities, and why should we care?
KinkZoid is like one of those animal fossils found in the bottom of a lake that the paleontologists can't really explain and baffles the biologists whose job it is to classify it and put it into its proper place in the evolutionary tree. Perhaps a creature which was already living on the fringes of extinction and obscurity had a horrible mutation which fused its DNA with another totally unrelated species. Then it flew into a cave and recorded some music with deformed electronically processed vocals.
Surprisingly, there is a very standard blues song on the album, which, despite its easy to recognize form and harmony, is a bit off, a bit putrified. Other aspects which we can classify from the historical comparative perspective would be the use of noise elements, some horns and guitars, keyboard instruments and percussions, as well as rhythms of a steady nature. There are also elements of ambience, collage, noise, rock music, chillout beats, neoclassicism, found sounds, lofi indie folk, childlike rhymes, psychedelic reverie, and other nonsense.
This music affected me with an overall feeling that something was not right. The music itself is a bit of a mistake. Not in a haphazard way, either, but as if the creators were intentionally thinking of confounding the listener by putting sounds together in a way that feels, as I said, just wrong. Certain sections feel very tightly controlled, and the music never really loses control the way some free music does. Even some parts are really pretty and brightly atmospheric. The question is not "Is the driver in control?" but "where is he taking us and why?"
By the way, the wrongness of this music is what makes it so special and worth hearing. Please enjoy, all.
You can purchase KinkZoid music from their website, sorry no free downloads, but some of their music is here at wtfm and more can be heard at myspace: http://www.myspace.com/kinkzoid
-Jeemobon
