Pitchfork
June 12, 2009
Link
7.3
So Kitsuné has an iPhone app now. Some of the groups from previous Kitsuné Maison compilations have started playing live together under the tagline "Kitsuné En Vrai!" ("Kitsuné for Real!"). The influential French dance imprint has even taken to holding promotional contests: Your face could be on the next comp's crazy cover collage! As trend pieces about blogs give way to trend pieces about Twitter, the ragtag style of electronic music most memorably-- if least descriptively-- lumped together as "blog house" has become, almost literally, yesterday's news.
And Kitsuné, after seven of these things, has long since lost its element of surprise. That's sort of what happens when you help launch the careers of Bloc Party, Hot Chip, Simian Mobile Disco, Klaxons, Crystal Castles, and basically every fashionably trashy electro-punk act that isn't Justice. This is good, of course, but ascendancy can breed complacency. One way to look at last year's Kitsuné Maison 6: The Melodic One is as a victim of the series' success, largely playing it safe with glossed-up but less-great takes on the kind of banging rock-meets-dance hybrids these guys have been championing since the first half of the decade. Even so, there were still left turns (a ballad!) and blogworthy newcomers (Heartsrevolution, Ted & Francis).
Kitsuné Maison 7 is a slight but welcome improvement over its predecessor. Bright guitar pop and mellow psych-outs now go with the usual French Touch-ed electro-house thumps. The type of slow and spaced-out disco lately repopularized by Lindstrøm, Studio, and others fields its biggest Kitsuné Maison representation yet. Sure, with 19 tracks (plus a 20-second "encore" break), the album still sometimes errs toward the generically danceable instead of the truly memorable. But the best cuts easily reconfirm the label's ear for promising talent.
Not that you need Kitsuné to tell you Phoenix are fucking awesome, but a remix by L.A. duo Classixx gives Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix's "Lisztomania" a gorgeously pillowy synth-disco framework, sort of like Simian Mobile Disco's "I Believe" or Friendly Fires' "Paris (Aeroplane Remix)". Also graceful is Prins Thomas' "Sneaky Edit" of London folktronica singer/songwriter James Yuill's "This Sweet Love", with its feathery acoustic guitar and house beats suggesting a cosmic disco re-edit of José González-- or Matthew Sweet. Northern Ireland's Two Door Cinema Club open the comp with breezy pop, like a bubblegum Phoenix with Vampire Weekend on chirruping lead guitar. To give you an idea how mellow this disc can be: L.A.'s Heartsrevolution, last seen making croaky basement electro-punk the Crystal Castles way, are back this time with a woozy music-box commencement lullaby (and a neat The Little Prince-inspired video).
Other choice selections include more predictable Kitsuné jams. New York blog darlings the Golden Filter stick to their Glass Candy-glazed nu-disco on "Favorite Things", which happy-birthday-Mr.-Presidents its target demo's turn-ons: "Paris, London, sweet girls, cute boys, vodka, whiskey, cameras, pictures." Nobody on Lookbook.nu listens to Coltrane? And new act Maybb, widely rumored to be an alias for big-time Eurohouse DJ/producer Benny Benassi, hits all the right Daft Punk buttons with "Touring in NY (Short Tour Edit)". Elsewhere, Manchester's Delphic flash promise on a euphoric house remix of their single "Counterpoint", all blinking synths and Underworld-echoing vocals.
Even the inessential tracks are still likely to sound good out, though they're less fun around the house. Chew Lips' "Solo" has the misfortune of sounding like Yeah Yeah Yeahs gone electro-pop in a year when Yeah Yeah Yeahs kind of went electro-pop. And you can tell the one with former Le Tigre members (Men's "Make It Reverse") by the jagged post-punk bass lines, the defiant vocals. French group Chateau Marmont's "Beagle" is space disco in the original 1980s sense, with vocoders and galloping Moroder synths; also not far from the unremembered 80s is Chromeo-plated electro-funk from Beni and "Blue Monday" gloom-marching from La Roux. Other tracks, like We Have Band's "Time After Time", sound like they're trying to do too much: Eastern European spoken-word? "We'll be alone forever," a voice repeats on Crystal Fighters' "Xtatic Truth (Xtra Loud Mix)". Nah, just until Kitsuné starts following us all on Twitter.
And Kitsuné, after seven of these things, has long since lost its element of surprise. That's sort of what happens when you help launch the careers of Bloc Party, Hot Chip, Simian Mobile Disco, Klaxons, Crystal Castles, and basically every fashionably trashy electro-punk act that isn't Justice. This is good, of course, but ascendancy can breed complacency. One way to look at last year's Kitsuné Maison 6: The Melodic One is as a victim of the series' success, largely playing it safe with glossed-up but less-great takes on the kind of banging rock-meets-dance hybrids these guys have been championing since the first half of the decade. Even so, there were still left turns (a ballad!) and blogworthy newcomers (Heartsrevolution, Ted & Francis).
Kitsuné Maison 7 is a slight but welcome improvement over its predecessor. Bright guitar pop and mellow psych-outs now go with the usual French Touch-ed electro-house thumps. The type of slow and spaced-out disco lately repopularized by Lindstrøm, Studio, and others fields its biggest Kitsuné Maison representation yet. Sure, with 19 tracks (plus a 20-second "encore" break), the album still sometimes errs toward the generically danceable instead of the truly memorable. But the best cuts easily reconfirm the label's ear for promising talent.
Not that you need Kitsuné to tell you Phoenix are fucking awesome, but a remix by L.A. duo Classixx gives Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix's "Lisztomania" a gorgeously pillowy synth-disco framework, sort of like Simian Mobile Disco's "I Believe" or Friendly Fires' "Paris (Aeroplane Remix)". Also graceful is Prins Thomas' "Sneaky Edit" of London folktronica singer/songwriter James Yuill's "This Sweet Love", with its feathery acoustic guitar and house beats suggesting a cosmic disco re-edit of José González-- or Matthew Sweet. Northern Ireland's Two Door Cinema Club open the comp with breezy pop, like a bubblegum Phoenix with Vampire Weekend on chirruping lead guitar. To give you an idea how mellow this disc can be: L.A.'s Heartsrevolution, last seen making croaky basement electro-punk the Crystal Castles way, are back this time with a woozy music-box commencement lullaby (and a neat The Little Prince-inspired video).
Other choice selections include more predictable Kitsuné jams. New York blog darlings the Golden Filter stick to their Glass Candy-glazed nu-disco on "Favorite Things", which happy-birthday-Mr.-Presidents its target demo's turn-ons: "Paris, London, sweet girls, cute boys, vodka, whiskey, cameras, pictures." Nobody on Lookbook.nu listens to Coltrane? And new act Maybb, widely rumored to be an alias for big-time Eurohouse DJ/producer Benny Benassi, hits all the right Daft Punk buttons with "Touring in NY (Short Tour Edit)". Elsewhere, Manchester's Delphic flash promise on a euphoric house remix of their single "Counterpoint", all blinking synths and Underworld-echoing vocals.
Even the inessential tracks are still likely to sound good out, though they're less fun around the house. Chew Lips' "Solo" has the misfortune of sounding like Yeah Yeah Yeahs gone electro-pop in a year when Yeah Yeah Yeahs kind of went electro-pop. And you can tell the one with former Le Tigre members (Men's "Make It Reverse") by the jagged post-punk bass lines, the defiant vocals. French group Chateau Marmont's "Beagle" is space disco in the original 1980s sense, with vocoders and galloping Moroder synths; also not far from the unremembered 80s is Chromeo-plated electro-funk from Beni and "Blue Monday" gloom-marching from La Roux. Other tracks, like We Have Band's "Time After Time", sound like they're trying to do too much: Eastern European spoken-word? "We'll be alone forever," a voice repeats on Crystal Fighters' "Xtatic Truth (Xtra Loud Mix)". Nah, just until Kitsuné starts following us all on Twitter.
