Kit Clayton vs. Safety Scissors

Ping Pong

Carpark

Kit Clayton vs. Safety Scissors present Ping Pong, a brief EP packed with 36 tracks. Here is an equally brief description of how it sounds:

1. Ping Pong Balls

1. 8-bit Melody, two voices spelling the word “Bingo,” suddenly inundated by sampled percussion, namely the clicks of ping pong balls.

1. The trademarked sound of malfunctioning electronics.

1. More of that.

1. Glitches turn into another video game-styled melody, with abrasive percussion and cut-up vocals for textural benefit. More ping pong sounds.

1. Noisy guitar sounds over similar tonal palette.

1. Ping Pong Balls.

1. 15 seconds of static cracks.

1. A MIDI organ sound playing octaves, with a voice emulating a ping pong game in stereo sound.

1. An intro to track 11.

1. A pop song, with a similar palette to earlier tracks, this time with a more discernable vocal track.

1. Introduction to track 13.

1. A rather exotic beat for six seconds.

1. Very snappy, danceable IDM track. Similar instruments, though mixed with a bit more sharpness.

1. Cut-Up Vocals

1. Pitch shifting samples from a game of ping pong.

1. Very dramatic rendering of ideas thus far expressed on the album Ping Pong. Bring together pong and ping pong in fragmented musical form. For 18 minutes.

1. Reversed sounds.

1. Abrasive percussive and 8-bit sounds fade into an acoustic guitar melody, which subsequently becomes abrasive again.

1. Glitch sounds.

1. Voices, electronics. Like The Boredoms with a laptop, maybe.

1. More.

1. A capella.

1. Casio keyboard executed Steve Reich-like loop pattern.

1. Noise.

1. Beat.

1. As if to show the album is running out of time, low-on-time video game music.

1. Here’s yet another whimsical fragment, thematically in-step with the album.

1. A particularly Safety Scissors-sounding track. A heavily digitized pop song. Full of skips, repeats, panning, glitches, bizarre percussive sounds, and a relatively nice melody.

1. Introduction to 31.

1. Dramatic videogame reminiscent of Toccata.

1. More Noise.

1. More nice stuff, i.e. Casio + household percussion.

1. More Noise.

1. Where track 29 was decidedly referential to 1980s New Wave, Track 35 is more informed by lounge music.

1. Game over.

If this review comes across as either needlessly quirky, too brief to make a point, or is just plain dull by Number 7, then I’ve made my point.

Carpark Records: http://www.carpark.com

Bob T. Saunders