New Music: Kinetic Stereokids, El-P, Panda Bear

Kinetic Stereokids - Mindf*ck (Overdraft 2007)

Kinetic Stereokids - Basement Kids / Overdraft

So today is it: My last official Spring Break. I guess I should be savoring it on the beaches of Panama City or partying it up in a hotel, tan and swole like everyone else on television makes it appear... But I'll take a few days at home to recuperate and decompress over a few too many Coronas on the white sands of San Padre Island. Or, as was the case last year, passing out on the lawn of Wagner College on Staten Island at 4AM. Pure class right there.

If I should ever foresee myself yearning for the beaches this week, I can do one of two things: Spend three hours driving down to Charleston to enjoy the splendor of a city that's known primarily for starting the American Civil War, or pop Kinetic Stereokids into my CD player. With fuel the way it is and with my income disproportionately insufficient, Basement Kids will have to do.

Which is okay, because these four young men out of Flint, Michigan are prepared for a larger audience. They've been together in one capacity or another since 1997, and apparently while everyone else in high school was covering Dave Matthews Band and 311, these guys were following the path down free-jazz improv rock. They've already got a handful of full-lengths and though Basement Kids is getting some national press, it sounds as delightfully DIY as any home recording could. The beachside "Mindf*ck" opens on a breezy note, swirling percussion taking you in and easing you into the following nine songs. The singing is endearing in its imperfections, underproduced and at times almost overmodulating. The music is serene and, though they take an unfortunate spoken-word detour on "Red Star," the rest of the album is a pretty solid expansion of territory Beck has been landscaping for the last decade. They may have opened for Explosions in the Sky and Wolf Eyes(?!) and The Secret Machines, but it's Hansen these guys seem to relate to most closely. The touches of scratching, snippets of conversation between songs, and acoustic-based folk-pop songs all contribute to the greater good: If that Information re-release this week just wasn't enough for you, this might help ease the pain. Ah, Spring Break. You've found your first last good soundtrack.













El-P - The Overly Dramatic Truth (Definitive Jux 2007)

El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead / Definitive Jux

Jaime Meline is another story. Indeed, I'll Sleep When You're Dead is a whole other story itself. For three years, we've waited to see what would happen with El-Producto in the wake of the renowned Collecting the Kid. But three years is a bad sign in the music industry acting on warp overdrive all the time: Whether you've been partying it up a little too much or you had a bad case of writer's block (or both), you tend to lose attention you might've garnered beforehand if you wait any longer. Unless you're Guns N' Roses, which some people astonishingly still care about.

In the case of El-P, all we can really gather from the new drop is that he's done a lot of listening. All the remixes and collaborations with Matthew Shipp in the world don't replace the beauty of a full-length, and the delivery here shows that it was worth the wait. Speaking of, a little pre-album publicity of the any-kind-is-a-good-kind variety can't hurt. You can do up the details yourself elsewhere, but here's basically how it went: El-P takes a picture with Diddy, a bunch of emails and misunderstandings are exchanged with Rawkus Records, I'll Sleep When You're Dead gets a little beef to go with its bite.

And boy does this album bite. Already noted for his aggressive delivery, El-P holds the line here and the results are remarkable. Right from the outset of the marvelously titled "Tasmanian Pain Coaster," El-P is delivering straight from the heart in a dense mess of lyrical eloquence that doesn't resonate in quite the same way when he's dissing Jarrett Myer in a MySpace blog. A notable aspect to this album that has already been pointed out is how he hates collaborations or features. But look at this laundry list of names: Aesop Rock, Cage, Cat Power, Matt Sweeney, Murs, Slug, both bro fros from The Mars Volta, Trent Reznor... And that's not even the full list. Obviously El got a little carried away with having folks stop by the studio to add their two cents, so maybe that's why the Brooklyn renaissance man's taken as long as he has. "The Overly Dramatic Truth" features Daryl Palumbo, but thankfully there's not much intruding by the Glassjaw/Head Automatica frontman beyond added keys. If you were like me last year and you opted to go north for Spring Break instead of head south, this is your soundtrack. Little doubt in my mind remains that El-P is, despite all the conflict and collaborations and clean edits (Sorry, adults), still at the top of his game. Ace.













Panda Bear - Search for Delicious (Paw Tracks 2007)

Panda Bear - Person Pitch / Paw Tracks

But for Panda Bear, an artist we've already featured here at Audiversity, it's back to the beaches for our final entry of the day. It seems like it's been less than a month since we last talked about Noah Lennox, and as memory serves correctly, not too long ago we were chatting up the Excepter split 12. Well, if you've had the pleasure of hearing the "Carrots" extended medley (or "Bros," even in remixed form by incestuous colleagues Terrestrial Tones) from said glorious piece of vinyl, you are in for a treat: Person Pitch is a magnificent folk album that has enough harmonies to make, well, The Beach Boys jealous. It was too easy.

And everything on this album sounds effortlessly natural to the point that it fits together perfectly. The shortest song on here ("Search for Delicious") is just over two minutes; the longest is "Good Girl" at 12:42. Nevermind the time disparities though, because it all comes together seamlessly in a way Animal Collective have become experts at over the years and a way in which Panda Bear personally has seen through on this solo effort. This vocals-as-instrument stuff works well yet again and though it feels dense at times, don't mind all that reverb and reversed percussion and bleeps and bloops and furiously strummed guitars: This is exactly the kind of Spring Break every freshman in university dreams of having, committed to tape... And with "Search for Delicious," it ends happily. No angry parents checking their credit card bills to see all the money you spent on "emergencies," no wicked hangovers from "beer" you bought in Cancún, no break-ups with girlfriends who were probably cheating on you back. All you come away with is a content smile on your face and a nice tan, you beautiful, beautiful man you.

Last time we brought up Panda Bear, we called it disco from outer-space, beyond the safety of the space shuttle. But it's time for recontextualization, a running theme in the music I've been listening to lately and something that speaks to the greater power of great music to be able to morph and change and adapt to particular, juxtaposing states of mind: Person Pitch isn't disco from outer-space. It's not even disco. It's beach music. Pure relaxation. The ultimate soundtrack to the open-windowed, late-night drive home at the end of the craziness that great Volkswagen commercials are made of. It's going to be a good Spring Break '07 for a lot of people; hopefully, these songs will provide a little balance to the usual club fare. It can't all be Red Jumpsuit Apparatus or Rich Boy.