Kylie Minoise — Die Yuppie Scum! Love Quest Ov Sick Shock Disco De
The first track, “Xxxeroxxx Ov Sicksicksick Shoxxx!” (all the titles are in a similar vein to this), is a short blast of twitching noise, with buried howling; i.e. essentially what I expected. It segues straight into the second track, which is full-on electro; albeit electro stretched and strained through distortion. My immediate thoughts were that this would be the herald of an album of Masonna or Evil Moisture-esque cut-ups; chaotic and kinetic jolts and spins, befitting the hallucinatory artwork. But actually, the track was a herald to an album of “electro stretched and strained through distortion.” Admittedly, its not all electro-derived; the influence of hip-hop, techno, acid, d’n’b and everything made in the cracks in between can be heard here. Its all presented in a context of noise; not speaker-melting aggression akin to the DHR label, but stressed and abrasive. Beats are recorded on the verge of saturation, walls of waspish noise circle in the background and the whole thing has a d-i-y, bedroom feel to it. Most of the tracks do involve beats, but sometimes they’re foregrounded and dominate, other times they’re buried under noisier elements. There are a few pieces built from rhythms or loops without explicit dance beats - one of which is a guitar-led drone, crawling in the wake of Jesu et al; whilst another pits a loop of “rock guitar” against ever shriller feedback and noise. This overt intrusion of guitars seems to be an issue with the album; practically everywhere that a guitar riff is heard, badness follows. The track I just mentioned is basically a terrible metal riff looped against increasing noise - and jokingly calling it “Metal Mafia vs Feedback Ninja!” doesn’t stop it from being terrible as a whole. Elsewhere, we have more horrible rock guitar on “Xxxtatik Xxxtasee Waves!”; and on “And The Dead Bug Words Popped From It's Mouth And Fell Into Her!”, we enter some kind of hellish soundtrack to a James Bond action sequence. Hellish in the sense that I really don’t want to ever listen to it again - its just bad guitar riffs circling, for a long time. This is another issue with the album - the tracks are often very long, without the virtues of repetition or “trance” coming to their aid.
Perhaps the kindest thing I can say about “Die Yuppie Scum! Love Quest Ov Sick Shock Disco Destroyer”, is that at times, it does achieve a hazy, psychedelic feel. But for most of the time, it has a leaden tone; rather akin to trip-hop. It also sounds curiously out of time: not cutting edge, but not exactly dated either. There’s a strong line of artists who have utilised and explored noise whilst making beat-orientated music: e.g. Emptyset, Cloaks, early Third Eye Foundation, Dalek, Aphex Twin - but this album doesn’t make a case for Kylie Minoise to be added