Electronic Sound May 2015 (Regular Edition) | Page 38

ALBUM REVIEWS

North and a commitment to the party,
and you’ve got some sense of what
makes ‘III, Part One’ a worthwhile listen.
There’s a plethora of riches to get stuck
into here, as was hinted at by last year’s
brilliant, out-of-nowhere, proto-Detroit
three-track banger, ‘The History Of
Techno’, and as will no doubt be further
explored on ‘III, Part Two’, which follows
in the next few months.

K-X-P

III, Part One
OM/SVART

Innovative Finnish post-kraut acid
stompers deliver a third set of irresistible
weirdosity
The Scandinavians rarely put a foot
wrong when it comes to music. From the
peerless bittersweet pop tones of Abba,
right up to the present with Miike Snow,
First Aid Kit and Lykke Li, as well as less
pop-oriented acts like The Knife and
Junip, the Nordics always seem to make
their mark.
K-X-P are perhaps the most adventurous
of the current bunch of boreal bands,
mixing a wild range of influences and
reference points with a lightness of touch.
They seem constantly at pains to eschew
the constraints of the conventional band
structure. Even their name hints at
something different, with the “K” being
lead vocalist and electronics whizz Timo
Kaukolampi, the “P” Tuomo Puranen,
who delivers bass and keyboards, and the
“X” a mysterious percussive element that
changes constantly.
Think pulsing acid house and technoflavoured drama fused with krautrock
discipline, glam rock playfulness and
West Coast psychedelia. Then throw
in the pagan abandon of the Magnetic

The first track, ‘Space Precious Time’, is a
chanted sing-a-long stomper. Heard in a
dark club in the small hours, the buzzing,
wheeling chords would be impossible to
resist. Even higher up the BPM register,
‘RA’ positively insists we join the revelry.
‘Obsolete And Beyond’ comes next and
is as a complete surprise, spinning us
back a few decades, giddily channelling
Joe Jackson’s ‘Steeping Out’ bassline
and Vangelis’ swirling synth patterns,
and pairing them with exhilaratingly
delivered, cave-echoed vocals. It’s a
high-octane nutcase of a track.
One minor criticism is that K-X-P’s
appetite for fluidity and innovation
means they fail to notice that little of

what they’ve done before needed fixing.
They sounded fully in their stride on
the poppily accessible ‘In The Valley’
(from ‘II’), for example, and the mindboggling ‘Pockets’ (from their self-titled
debut) demonstrated their alt-dance
prowess in no uncertain terms. But it’s
the sometimes prosaic nature of the
percussion here that lets this otherwise
excellent piece of work down slightly,
missing as it is the motorik adeptness o