Keys N Krates
Blackout EP
There’s a little bit of everything here – deep basso profondo bass, sampled and looped auto tuned squeaks and squawks, smooth and cool femvocals, and a hip-hop beat that comes right from the intersection of Graham and South 117th. The spare sound serves more like a dance trigger than back drop to an Occupy riot, and the relatively short pop-tune-length cuts filled with fancy editing nominate themselves for mash ups on a higher level or a hipper dance floor. “Let It Rain” suggests Elvis’ “It’s Now or Never” over a chorus lamenting a forgotten back street memory. A harpsichord or maybe a dulcimer leads into “Lucifer,” where KNK morphs the melody from Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells.” These guys are sly about picking pop culture references there audience is too young to grok; they even down sample Donna Summers’ “Love to Love You” and barely misspell the title (“Luv to Luv You.”) Today music lives by eating its elders, but that how it’s been from Michael Jackson all the way back to Bach and those Dorian Greeks singing backup for Oedipus Rex. KNK knows its stuff, you can learn from this EP.
Keys N Krates: http://www.keysnkrates.com
