Brighton-rocker Pilote, aka Stuart Cullen, follows up his 21st century releases DoItNowMan and ANTENNA with KINGFOOD, another foray into the world of 'obscure electronic pop' aka right-up-the-middle electronic music.
Most of the descriptives you'll find about KINGFOOD refer to its being WAYYY out, stuff like 'sonic discombobulations, downright ludicrous sounds, and electronic tapestry of serene madness', etc, etc, but its sonic palette is actually quite conservative overall. This could be a result of electronic music now invading everything from the car commercial to the dentist's office, but there is a huge nagging air of familiarity to much of what goes on here. Sans beats, there isn't much in the world of Pilote to suggest much of an evolution from the seminal electronic explorations of Raymond Scott back in the pre-microwave days.
The strengh of this collection seems designed to be appreciated on the dance floor. Its most consistent staple is the generally relentless and regular beats, but unfortunately there really isn't much on KINGFOOD that's rhythmically going to tweak your head right off either.
Things do get a little quirky now and then; a swarm of manipulated dialogue disrupts Easy Now in a quite pleasant way, and Julian Bareham's Roswellian contribution to Three Hundred is initially interesting, but most of these tracks never attain the bizarre sci-fi proportions they seem to aspire to.
The stand out cut on KINGFOOD is 'Welcome,' easily the most cinematic trip of the CD, featuring a verbal workout by guest Lewin that serves as foil to Pilote's beat making, and gives the track layers of contrast like an almost-ran from last year's MORRICONE RMX. Pilote could benefit from making the collaborative nature of Welcome a greater part of his process on subsequent releases should he want his music to make the journey from club to den.
Neither overly wacky nor subversively emotional, there's nothing particularly lacking in KINGFOOD, but it does play it safe enough of the time that, removed from dancefloor volume, it risks becoming so much sonic wallpaper. |