They say the clown is crying inside. But what of the terminal prankster? San Franciscan laptop wizard Kid 606 has always had a sense of humour of the glass-in-the-baby food variety - a psycho-comic rewiring of techno's staid conventions that culminated in that splendid, and flagrantly copyright-flouting digital mauling of NWA's 'Straight Outta Compton' earlier this year. But here's what happens when the gags run out. "See?" 'PS I Love You' seems to be saying, "I can be serious, too..."
The question is, why? After all, there's already a quite staggering number of post-this, post-that acts: Kriedler, Fridge, To Rococo Rot, plumbing this worthy, cerebral, but often ultimately joyless groove. And there's simply no justification for the likes of 'Sometimes' - a no-chord galactic drone that would have seen even Stanley Kubrick wandering out to put the kettle on. 'Whereweleftoff' fares better - a crackle of chitinous reptilian clicks over a migraine-inducing bass drum thud, smeared liberally with the pulped grey matter of Aphex Twin and all the better for it. But by 'Fuck Up Everything You Can Before You Plan On Slowing Down', where fucking up sounds, well, a bit like a fuck-up, it's all gone stale. For Kid 606, formula should equal anathema, but here, originality is little more than an afterthought.
'PS I Love You'? Sadly, nothing to write home about.
Louis Pattison
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