The Kid is hot tonight

>> Kid 606 rewires experimental techno and kicks out the jams


by RAF KATIGBAK

There’s an old saying in jazz: great musicians steal, everyone else gets caught. Never one to bow to tradition, 23-year-old electro-prankster Miguel Depredo, better known as Kid 606, is the living proof that getting caught is half the fun. For the last four years, Depredo’s uncompromising musical stance has risen him to the ranking of bastard child/posterboy for America’s next wave of experimental electronic producers/reducers. Ever since his pseudo-psycho noise remix of NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton” in 2000, he’s been flipping the script on some of experimental music’s staid concepts of what you should and shouldn’t do. Tonight, he descends on Montreal in support of his latest release The Action Packed Mentallist Brings You the Fucking Jams, on Violent Turd records.

“With this album, I’m just throwing away all the notions of what it takes to make a good electronic record,” says Depredo, “which is like experimental programs and computer programming. People are always asking, ‘Oh, do you program your own Reaktor patches?’ And I’m like, ‘Why are you asking me that?!’ Honestly, I’m not like Autechre, or even interested in saying, ‘Sure it’s not the most amazing music in the end and you might not want to listen to it a lot but I made it all with my own programs and I programmed three computers to do it!’ If that’s your schtick and you’re gonna get put in a fuckin’ art exhibit for it, then that’s cool. But nerds really don’t get off on what I do, and it’s just not something I try to achieve.”
What the Kid has achieved on his latest album is 50 minutes of some of the finest moments in hip/pop music, past and present, twisted to fuck by his signature hardcore booty-beats and drill & bass. Sounding like a retro-dance-hits mixtape on hi-octane crank, tracks like the smoothed-out swing of Soul II Soul’s “Back to Life” get re(de)ranged into a head-bobbing glitch-hop anthem while Missy Elliot’s Jeep-jerkin’ bomb “Get Your Freak On” suddenly whips into a drum & bass frenzy and then morphs into hard-steppin’ version of A-ha’s “Take on Me” in the most unabashed display of musical theft since Frank McDally stole my Weird Al Yankovic tape in fifth grade. One listen to Action Packed... and it’s pretty clear that the Kid just wants to get the party started—a good old-fashioned hi-octane crank party.

Steal this Powerbook

When asked if he’s worried about what the normally stuffy experimental electronic world will think of his outright plunderphonic pilfering of pop jams, the answer was a resounding “Hell, no!”

“Pop music steals from the underground and everyone complains about that. ‘Oh, Christina Aguilera has fuckin’ Autechre beats! Oh, Radiohead’s stealing these fuckin sounds.’ I say fuck it, steal right back. Pop music was in a rut, and it got more interesting by stealing from electronic music. Now electronic music is totally in a rut, and no one’s stealing from fuckin’ pop music. That’s why electronic music’s gonna really eat its own ass. Everyone’s trying to find the answer in software.”

The software he’s referring to are experimental music and sound-creation programs like Reaktor, Tassman and Max MSP that has become de rigeur for any “serious” experimental musician these days. But just as in most scenes where 99 per cent of the population are nerds, fans can get more obsessed with details than the actual end product (if you knew that Klingons have two nervous systems, two livers, an eight-chambered heart and three kidneys then, um, ignore the last statement).

With countless releases on numerous labels, Depredo finds himself riding that happy hardcore medium between so-called “intelligent” dance music and fist-pumpin’, booty-shakin’, hands-in-the-air party jams. He delivers a live show that includes two laptops, lots of yelling and much beer-throwing—like his last show here in Montreal at last year’s FCMM festival.

“Oh God, that was an expensive show for me. My computer got knocked off at the end and I spilled beer on my main pieces of gear, so that show just cost me a lot. But anyway, it was worth it. I’m gonna try and be a little calmer these days. The people I’ll be playing with, Gold Chains, he’s just the most sick-ass, Jay-Z-meets-Autechre, tripped-out electronic music with crazy MCing. Lesser is also pretty crazy, electronic black metal with guitar and vocals. Live, the music has tons of energy.

“Hopefully that won’t put any pressure on me to be entertaining,” he adds, suggesting that show-goers might want to leave their beer-proof hats at home this time around. Unless, of course, that’s what he wants you to believe… :

With Gold Chains, Lesser and Carl Cocks at la Sala Rossa tonight, Thursday, April 4, 9pm, $15