Kid606: Down With The Scene

It seems like it should be hard to be a Kid and an artist. But age does not seem to be a handicap of any importance to 22-year-old Kid606. He's a sly little guy with one insistence in his music: it must never (ever) engage any of the cliches of electronic music. Meanwhile, the Kid's a big po-mo style-hopper with a mammoth range: sometimes trance-like, other times toying with ear-drum-smashing square waves. Sometimes both, and you have to be very tolerant to deal with all these fun and games.

Kid606 seems to have had a lot of fun making this music, and that feeling is infectious for the listener. The opener, "Chart Topping Radio Hit," crackles through some nearly inaudible sounds, then crashes giant square waves, and makes weird typewriter noises for a while... And then, at one point, we get a weird three-piece drum-n-bass "chorus" accompanying adolescent female vocals, flowing in and out:

Do you know what you're wearing now?
Do you feel pretty good?
Yeah.
Uh huh.
[etc.]

What to make of this mystery? As little as possible, I think. It's more the cadence of the voices, and the architectural soundscape behind them, that make that part of Down with the Scene work as well as it does. Kid606 is an artist, you see. He enjoys the extremes of perception... torn asunder.

It's not new, but Kid606's "Down with the Scene" effort from last year breathes fresh air into electronica. It tells you he's gonna do it his way, and he certainly doesn't give a shit what you think. How many suckers are willing to play his game? I certainly am, if he keeps up the drama and continues to be so indulgently open-minded. His remixes and his previous solo efforts have been nice, but Down With The Scene is a virtual assault on the weaknesses of convention.

The Kid puts it this way, in his (ironic?) title to the last original tune on the record:

"in love with all you are and forever maybe as if my soul depended on it to survive."