My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult
Golden Pillz: the luna remixes
(Sleazebox/Underground Inc.)
We all know that Thrill Kill Kult isn’t the most “industrial” band anymore. They’ve been toying with more techno and dance sounds over the years, from the disco of “Sexplosion!” to the straight-up ’50’s kitsch of “Hit & Run Holiday”. But since “Industrial” is in the magazine’s title (and since that’s what I prefer to listen to), let’s take this review from that particular angle.
“A Crime For All Seasons” was a major change for the TKK. It was a return to a very industrial style for the band, brought back guitar into the mix, and was their best work since “Confessions Of A Knife”. Their follow-up, “The Reincarnation Of Luna”, was very similar, but the tone was more dark and electronic than the previous album. It was more of a culmination of all the styles the band has encompassed over the years, from retro-trash disco to electro industrial-dance. So to follow this successful creation, the first release for their new label, they decided to produce their first remix album.
Now, like I said before, I’m an industrial fan. And I did enjoy “Luna” very much, though not with the thorough ferocity of “A Crime For All Seasons”. So it was with great disappointment that I listened to “Golden Pillz”, a collection of dull techno/house re-creations and bastardizations of previously good songs.
Vermyn (of Eat Static Productions) starts off the proceedings by turning “Temptation Serenade”, formerly a hard electro-dance track, into wah-guitar-filled house music, something that you might hear at a very bad club on a night that you thought was industrial/fetish, but, when you arrive, you fine nothing but 4/4 house, guys in khakis, and spiky-haired, big-panted kids with glowsticks. A mediocre remix of the also mediocre “Asylum Disciple” chases on its heels, not really hurting my feelings nearly as much.
The “Silverado” remix of “Radio Silicon” by Diamond Galaxy is the first track actually worth notice and turns the only real “industrial” track from “Luna” into a fairly enjoyable, though minimalist, dance track. TRS-80, though sometimes experimentally interesting, can’t seem to make anything out of the not-very-interesting “Hour Of Zero”, one of worst tracks off of “Luna”. It only serves as an opportunity for him to add some weird effects to the vocal tracks and a bizarre breakbeat ending that comes out of nowhere to disorient and confuse the listener.
Laying across the middle of the album like a dead hooker are the incredibly uninventive remixes of “Girl Without A Planet”, “Flesh Playhouse”, and a remix of “Temptation Serenade” by Francis A. Preve that sounds like a bad Apoptygma Berzerk track (as if such a thing as a good one exists). All are about as interesting as a Tiny Tim ukulele solo, which, now that I think about it, would have been a nice touch.
Even the incredibly reliable and talented Julian Beeston turns in a lame and limp techno remix of “Radio Silicon”. It’s as if this album is actively trying to assault your senses with wave after wave of disappointment, redundancy, and mediocrity. And, as such, Julian’s folly is followed by weak and/or pointless remixes of “Asylum Disciple” and “Flesh Playhouse”, the latter by Diamond Galaxy, ruining whatever credit they received for their earlier “Radio Silicon” mix.
Buzz McCoy manages to turn in two fairly cool remixes, giving a totally different spin to “Jungle Of Love” and “The Untouchable Class” (which is unfortunately tarnished by badly effected vocals). Juttajaw’s “Hour Of Zero” remix tries to ruin whatever momentum Buzz has created and Bill Van Ryn closes the album out on a totally decent but uneventful note; maybe I’m just imagining it’s better than it really is because that means the album is over and I can take it out and throw it back to the obscurity of my CD collection.
Regardless, not a CD to be listened to by anyone but fans of the TKK who happen to be techno-kid, glowstick-bandying, raver house-junkies.
(Sleazebox Records, P.O. Box 608215, Chicago, IL 60660)
from IndustrialnatioN Magazine #18