Californian producer Miguel Depedro’s more recent albums as Kid606 have seen him increasingly moving away from breakcore / hardcore in favour of a more accessible approach that reeks of nostalgia for classic house and rave, and this latest album ‘Shout At The Doner’, his first since 2006’s ‘Pretty Girls Make Raves’ sees him determinedly continuing that stylistic trajectory. As the both the addition of the umlauts and cover art reminiscent of Radiohead’s ‘terror bear’ suggest however, this is a considerably heavier and more freaked out collection than its predecessor, and where ‘Pretty Girls…’ took its cue from Chicago house and punk-funk, ‘Shout…’ reaches far more towards the bass-hoovering, distorted likes of LFO, Joey Beltram and Two Bad Mice. Indeed, ‘Mr. Wobble’s Nightmare’, a tongue in cheek homage to 4Hero’s parent-scaring rave classic ‘Mr. Kirk’s Nightmare’ gives a good indication as to the sort of chaotic mood here as floor-rattling bass drops roll beneath the spoken voiceover (“it seems the other partygoers ran out of food and drinks and, er…ate your son, sir”).
Elsewhere, ‘Samhain, California’ drags things out into dark mutant electro that’s strangely reminiscent of a more narcotised Chemical Brothers, while ‘Hello Serotonin, My Old Friend’ sounds like the sort of furious plastic handbag rave AFX would probably unleash if he programmed a room at something like Q-Dance. ‘Dancehall Of The Dead’ meanwhile offers up what’s easily one of the biggest highlights here, tossing the old “hands up who wants to die†sample over a wobbling backdrop of bleeping off-centre house that manages to pack in a sampled chunk of The Breeders’ ‘Cannonball’ in there before flaming out, before ‘You All Break My Heart’s goes off on a diva-house tangent complete with Chaka Khan-style rnb screams, the original sampled vocal being cut-up into some hilariously nonsensical phrases. While for the most part things stay in uptempo dancefloor territory for the majority of this album, the last quarter sees the pace dropping for an ‘outro’ suite of sorts, ‘Great Lakes’ gliding fusion of glistening IDM synths and motorik drum machines offering a suitably calming counterpoint to the preceding madness. An excellent album from Kid606 that manages to edge out its predecessor – at 79 minutes and 17 tracks though, there’s the occasional sense that he could have perhaps trimmed things down a bit here and there.
