Vol 12 / Trk 09 / Kung Fu / The Dirtbombs

As is becoming the norm, Mr. Klops leaves me curiously flabbergasted with where this volume is going. But I’ll try something different this time and respond to his one track only, instead of the cumulative direction of the mix. It’s going to take us further away from the heaviness of the first half, but let’s see what happens.

The vocal similarities between Saul Williams and Mick Collins are there, and there’s an interesting line about Collins as an African-American, but there are only a couple of songs I can think of by Collins’ band The Dirtbombs that could follow “List of Demands.” “Kung Fu” is one of them, and I’d like to think that after the mono-quality previous track, this one explodes in full stereo (and does some nifty fuckery between channels). It’s also the best Bauhaus homage/theft I know, using the singularly awesome backbeat from “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” as a propeller into the bulk of the song where fuzzy Detroit guitars squall. It’s another interesting combination of the human and the mechanical, which I suppose I’m inadvertently turning into a theme lately.

m. joosse

Filed under: Mixtape, NEIMT, Vol 12, The Dirtbombs