Junkie Kut – T.H.E.Y (Unrepresented Music)

In my review of Red Cosmos earlier this week I mentioned needing to do a flow chart style review because of the intensely variable nature of the release. This is the other album that would benefit from this style of review. Adorned with images of C.C.T.V cameras, aliens and eyes in pyramids this seems like the sort of album we like to receive here at Sitting Now towers. But the audio pudding may only be proved by being eaten with ears, so munch away my lobed little beauties.

Junkie Kut – T.H.E.Y (Under 16’s review)

Begining wiv a ominus staytemunt of intent about how we’re all well vexed innit, Junkie Kut’s speedcore / gabber / digital grindcore album is fucking sick bruv. First up T.H.E.Y stands for The Hierarchy Enslaving You which is epic and true because everyone I know is enslaved by a well unfair benefit system and voting and cheap food and the internet. Basically right what Junkie Kut is about is fucking up your shit and the Queens shit and anything that’s shits shit. Junkie Kut is gunner do vis by playing crazy guitar over stupidly fast gabber/breakcore beats and screaming in a way that makes me worried. Theres almost literally no way anyone can dislike choons like “Secret Society” because theyre too mental bruv and I reckon that when Junkie Kut plays live it prolly goes MENTUL ! Da hole album rages hard against those cunts who go to work and haven’t got loads of tattoos and I reckon if they heard it theyd cry and hide and realise that were right and that society should just be like a big long weekend where everyone does drugs and dances and wears bin liners and does loads more drugs. Its da best fing Ive ever heard and Im gonner play it on the bus and look different to everyone and annoy everyone which might just change everything,

Junkie Kut – T.H.E.Y (Over 18’s review)

By the end of the opening manifesto statement I realise that this album is not aimed at me. Wide eyed optimism and sentiment that no-one at the age of 36 can possibly hold unless they regularly wear a crash helmet without being on any kind of cycle. Lyrics that urge us to overthrow the bad stuff (capitalism, politics etc) are all very well but they’r e presented in such a teenage fashion that I couldn’t help cringing. Some people would say that at my age I shouldn’t be listening to anything this insanely naive but I’d rather listen to this than the wave of menopause inflected folk wankery that most of my peers seem to listen to. And that’s because despite it’s teen presentation and its obnoxious façade it’s sort of saying the right things. People should be looking at their governments and the banks and all the things wrong in the world and more than that they should be doing something about it. Junkie Kut is a call to arms that I think anyone under 16 would benefit from hearing and through it they’ll discover a rich world of art and music that will feed the spirit of resistance that he wants to foster.

However, I’ve done my time in this field. Give me The Prodigy’s “Music For A Jilted Generation” over this any day…or Nailbomb….or Ministry etc etc. It sounds like the album has been made using Reaktor or Reason or something for the beats and synths. The beats are effective but utterly unchanged since the days where I used boing about to gabber and hardcore and shit. The synths throughout are weirdly clean (at times Moby-like) and the whole thing is ordered and 4/4. I expect more dirt and mess from this sort of album and yet the vocals and guitars are pretty much uniformly distorted (or presented through a loudhailer plug in) to the extent where it sounds normal. As a dear friend of mine would say “It’s been quantized to death”. Everything happens exactly when expected and that spoils the fun. There are some inadvisable moments too….a hip-hop beat with pseudo rapping that fails hard. A sea shanty piano intro with humming that is ghastly. Junkie (he likes the informal approach) also has a thing for pitching his vocals up and down which mostly works but occasionally you hear a little smurf in the background and chuckle to yourself.

The last and most insanely pedantic thing that frazzles my balls about this album is the fucking spelling. There is no such word as “neutrify” despite what urban dictionary thinks. There is also no such word as “synchronation”. Below I have included a table that displays the incorrectly spelt words on the left and the correct spelling on the right. I’d like you to bear in mind that these spelling mistakes and made up words are on a proper album with distribution and everything. Under the table (unless you’ve become bored and/or frustrated with this ridiculously long review) I am going to explain why spelling and language matter.

So when I realized how many errors there were in this album booklet I thought about whether or not it matters. Language is fluid and maybe this is it evolving ? Possibly, but what it does for me is totally undermine anything it purports to be saying. It also makes it easy for T.H.E.Y to dismiss you (Junkie) and your fans as dimwits. I also find it frightening that no-one at any point spotted any of these things and corrected them.

I genuinely like a few of the things on this album because they’re fun. I also think that Junkie Cut can go on and do good things. But never call one of your songs something as wanky as “Indigenous Wisdom Keepers” again and lay off water fluoridation as well. It’s good for our teeth. End of story.

http://www.junkiekut.com/

Kim Monaghan