R*E*P*E*A*T* presents Fear of a Black Kennett

Review from http://www.wide.eu.org

I got this album at its lanch gig at the Portland Arms in Cambridge. So on my first listening I was tired slightly drunk and had people shouting at me to turn of the music cos it was the middle of the night.

But even under these less that ideal conditions I found out that this was a brillant album, it brings together whole miriad of music that in the end sounds good together.

There are the usual R*E*P*E*A*T suspects like Miss Black America, The Virgin Sucicides and Neo. They all have very polished sounding recordings, as far as things go Neo realy pushes things far more than anyone else, with a raw sound and that.

This album isn't just about unsigned music, (that happens to be good) there are also some realy big bands (not like glenn miller) on here as well with bands like King Adora, Asian Dub Foundation and Chris T-T featuring. However im not too sure

I realy liked the track from We Can Build You (now sadly no more), the wierd off but cool drums and noise gitair realy pusshes the bands sound away from what could be realy stale indy music. There sound is realy distictive but not too far from what we know and love in the manics and so on to be alien.

Cosy Cosy's track is quite good it is loud crunchy and exciting. Somhow it isn't as good as there live performance. The vocals lack urgncy some of the time. It's a brillant track, but better live!

Corperation Blend do some mad stuff with bloopy synths and grungy gitairs. Compleate with noise gitairs that counger up images of some drooling monster. It's too much one foot in each camp for me. An interesting experiment that may go somewhere and defently moves some boundarys, but somehow it seems non comital to eather timbre.

The Asian Dub Foundation track Black and White realy hits the nail on the head with the political stuff. It's a realy good track to finsh up on. Criticly it sounds realy polished compared to there live sound. Again I prefer them live, the vocals just arn't excitable enough and it sounds dry compared to the band playing live.

Ed