Kid606 — Songs About Fucking Steve Albini

I swear to God something about Kid606 really irritates me.  He always gets his name dropped in all the glossy fashion/music/art/lifestyles magazines but I find little substance in any of his much-ballyhooed hiphop recordings.  More like the hipster version of hiphop -- all surface, maybe occasionally vulgar but inconsequential.

This is an all-instrumental electronic album, and Kid just doesn't cut it in that genre either.  The title and cover art is a bad, unfunny inside joke on one of the few big name music producers to have any ounce of integrity.  That alone does not endear me to this record.

Truth is, this recording is too antiseptic to be interesting, for the most part.  Kid may claim that he used analogue equipment exclusively yet admits to digitally processing it, hence how inorganic this disc sounds.  Well OK, "Odd Ripe Legume" does have an interesting organ-drone to it, like Philip Glass -- maybe he deserves credit for that.  "Lou Reed Gimped", though, is the most irritating track here with chattery voice samples, and it's a very long ten minutes.  On "Deep Lid Morgue", Kid ruins power electronics like he ruins hiphop -- takes all the guts out of it then just leaves the superficial bits.  At least the closing track has some dirt on it, but not enough to save this record.

I'm sure all the hipsters are raving about Kid606's new style.  Might make some press, but in reality it's pure superfluity.