Noisy electro / rave / booty-house trio Kids On TV have already amassed a fair degree of live notoriety in their home city of Toronto, not least as a result of their riotous performances (which apparently regularly end with the audience onstage) and their debauched annual “Bathhouse’ events. From what I can gather, this debut album on CoS Mixing Business With Pleasure in many senses represents something of a critical stage for KOTV, in that having established a name as a spectacular performance trio, they’re now under pressure to match the live gender-politic pyrokinetics with a slice of studio substance that establishes them further as a “band’ in the proper sense. Fortunately, in the case of ‘Mixing…’, a stylistically diverse collection that references numerous elements of queer history, culture and the artists that have inspired KOTV over the years whilst melding proceedings to typically explosive and distorted beats, they have little cause for any concern.
Opener “Breakdance Hunx’ slams things straight into the action on a tip that comes across similar to a more electro-rock fuelled version of Fischerspooner, sampled live drums clattering beneath analogue electro-synth basslines and scratched flurries of garage-rock guitar feedback. It also immediately introduces the deliberately calculated shock-value lyrics that liberally litter much of the ten tracks here, the “little blonde boy who breakdances and sucks cock / we’ll make five grand off your ass in a week” chorus hook letting the easily offended listener know what they’re in for early, in a manner that calls to mind Captain Ahab’ synth-punk homoeroticism. From there on in, it’s a dancefloor-fuelled trajectory that dominates most of the rest of the tracklisting, the cowbell-laden “A Song For Hollywoodlawn’ injecting a dash of hip-house into proceedings before “Cockwolves’ blasts through two and a half minutes of distorted Ministry-esque drum machines, stark analogue synth bursts and echo-drenched yells that strangely calls to mind one of Trans Am’s more industrial-edged moments, before tumbling into a shamelessly cheesy rave breakdown, dated piano synths and all.
Perhaps the only slight wrong move here arrives in the form of “We Don’ Have To Take Our Clothes Off’, a strangely innocent downbeat slice of vocal-harmony synth pop in the vein of Datarock that sits at odds with the wilful helpings of open sleaze that surround it, whilst also verging towards the wrong side of twee. Far more successful is the one cover version to make an appearance here, a stark downbeat electro re-reading of Roxy Music’s classic pervy suburban chiller ‘In Every Dream Home, A Heartache’ that easily represents one of this album’ most effective moments, without dropping a single cuss-word. It’s certainly far stronger than the two bonus remixes tacked onto the end of the tracklisting here, neither of which offer much in the way of anything interesting to proceedings. In summation, despite the above remarks Mixing… easily backs up KOTV’ notorious live performances with studio recorded substance, and if you’re a listener with a high offense threshold and tolerance for toilet humour, you’re likely to find this one of the stronger electro-rock / pop offerings of the year. Fans of Chicks, the similarly filthy-minded Avenue D and Captain Ahab may well find much to like here – not bad for an album recorded over a three year period with only a single busted laptop and two microphones.
Chris Downton
