Kid606 The Soccergirl EP

About

Kid606 ushers in the second installment of the Carpark “sports-FAN” CD series with The Soccergirl EP. This special CD, with soccerball shaped CD and soccer-field surface inspired traycard, is sure to cause some lively debate with the punters. With this recording, Mr. 606 makes a departure from many of his previous recordings. Those associating the sixer with punk/gabba-inspired mayhem or glitchity/cutty style poppity-pop will be in for a big surprise.

Instead, The Soccergirl EP offers six tracks of melody-suffused ambient electronics in a style reminiscent of early Kraftwerk or to Roccoco Rot. This is definitely “post-season” listening. With song titles like “If My Heart Ever Ran Away It Would Be Looking For The Day When Right Beside You It Could Forever Stay,” it seems very clear where the inspiration for The Soccergirl EP is coming from. Blending teutonic sounds and rhythms with a distinctly Southern Californian perspective, our young Mr. 606 showcases his burgeoning talent to blend elements of traditional “songcraft” (melody, rhythm, harmony, et.al.) in an exciting and “non-songy” way. It’s not post-rock and it’s not post-techno. And it most surely doesn’t taste like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Here we have music that will reflect the tastes of the future millennium. Carpark therefore is pleased to be the first on this planet to offer the new genre “sixth world”: as a nod to all well-meaning colonialists as well as more importantly to all those preparing for a new socio-political era that many of us can already taste.

Artist Bio

Inspired by hardcore techno, indie punk, noise rock, and a liberal dose of heavy metal, the recordings of Kid606 have been a highlight of the growing American indie electronica scene. His lack of seriousness regarding “intelligent techno” (conspicuous in his attitude as well as his recordings) and fondness for breakbeat thrash have placed him in line with a wide variety of compatriots, including Digital Hardcore advocates Atari Teenage Riot and electronics deconstructivists such as Add N (To X).

A native of Venezuela, the Kid moved to San Diego early in life. After becoming interested in samplers, he began recording and released some material with Spacewurm and Ariel, two acts associated with the Southern California label Vinyl Communications. After the demise of both, Kid606 debuted on his own with a full-length for VC, 1998’s Don’t Sweat the Technics. A split CD with Lesser gained release later that year, as well as the VC EPs Unamerican Activity and Dubplatestyle. In mid-2000, Kid606 released Down with the Scene, his first album for the experimental Ipecac label associated with Faith No More’s Mike Patton. A few months later, the experimental techno label Mille Plateaux issued the comparatively subdued P.S. I Love You, along with an accompanying remix album (P.S. You Love Me) the following year. Kid606 veered back into hardcore with 2002’s mashup-heavy The Action Packed Mentallist Brings You the Fucking Jams and 2003’s Kill Sound Before Sound Kills You.

Resilience, from 2005, and Pretty Girls Make Raves, released one year later, found Kid606 returning to the green pastures of an earlier era in electronic music; the first harked back to IDM and electronic listening music, while the second was a back-to-basics techno record. (Both appeared on Tigerbeat6.) He also worked in the side project Disc with Lesser and Matmos and, in addition to a number of other collaborative projects in the works throughout the late 2000s, Kid606 found time to issue EP number six, Die Soundboy Die. The follow-up full-length, Shout at the Döner, landed in 2009. His next record, 2010’s all-analog and nearly beatless Songs About Fucking Steve Albini, appeared on Important Records, home to records by Merzbow and Zurich. Lost in the Game, a set of tunes that embraced melody more than anything previously in his evolution, was released in 2012.

— John Bush, allmusic.com