Though nowhere near as willfully experimental as some of hisearlier releases, Resilience promises to be an album that will find aprominent place in Kid 606’s body of work as his most meditative and(egads!) mature.
TigerBeat 6
When I listen to Kid 606, I look forward to having my mind melted. Iexpect schizoid rhythms, caustic noise, and unrelenting beats to kickmy ass around my room and to make me dance like a marionette. And forthe most part, that’s just what Kid 606 has done. Over the course ofseven years he’s perfected his mish-mash agro style, which placed apremium on aggression, noisy experimentation, and spliced samples. SoResilience was a total sucker punch for me, which is probably just howthe Kid intended it to be. Simplicity is his M.O. on this release, andthe songs barely come close to touching upon his schizophrenic mash-upsof previous releases. “Done With the Scene” opens the album and slowlybuilds upon a series of panning synthesizer samples. The rhythm, thoughsedate, still provides enough kick to prevent the song from languishingand does a good job of not interrupting the washes of synthesizer aboveit. This leads right into “Spanish Song,” with its near disco readypercussion and random vocal samples, sounds like a club jam slowed downfor the benefit of the weary. After the high standards set by thesesongs, the album splits itself between material that is interesting andwell executed and material that is not. An example of the latter can befound on “Phoenix Riddim” which abuses its reggae guitar sample andquickly wears out its welcome. Similarly, “Sugarcoated” is stretchedfar to thin, so that by the time it ends I had forgotten what had madethe track appealing in the first place. But while there are severalless then stellar moments on Resilience, they are balanced out bytracks like “Xmas Funk,” where Kid 606 varies the tempo and builds upona variety of loops rather then just one. Elsewhere, there is“Cascadia,” with its synthesizer squelches and distant rhythm track.While the song is far from anything Kid 606 has attempted before, itnonetheless can rank up alongside with some of his finest work. Thoughseveral of the songs on have been culled from earlier releases it wouldbe unfair to label this a rarities or singles collection. Ultimately,Resilience is a record that allows Kid 606 to spread himself into otherstyles.
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