There aren’t many artists out there who can release records which have such a unique calming impact on the listener and yet can mix up their style with a range of different genre with such ease to produce music for other artists.
Since exploding on the scene with 50 Cent’s “When Death Becomes You,”, The Kickdrums have provided production for Chamillionaire, Young Joc, Scarface, Papoose, Talib Kweli, Little Brother, and others. The duo are known to spend countless hours in the studio; often hitting three figures, generating new material, working with artists, and mashing a surfeit of samples until they acquire their own style. There’s no wonder certain ‘music insiders’ consider the pairing of Alex Fitts and Matt Penttila to be one of the hottest around.
The album in general has no guest appearances and there is no ‘hip-hop’ vibe to it even though the duo do seem to specialise in producing for such artists. Rather, the overall genre would in my opinion have to fall within the ‘indie’ category although many people would probably disagree… The album itself starts as it means to go on; the opening track entitled Impatient (Slow Down) has a range of instruments playing throughout, with the lyrics flowing at a slow, laid back pace. This theme progresses for the duration of the album with each song having a slightly different feel to it.
The three ’stand out’ songs for me have to be Just A Game, Personal Calamity and Out To Get Me!. Just A Game, was of course the first to be released and you can find video here. Personal Calamity starts off sounding like something you’d here from an old Nintendo 64 game, it then begins to flow into that trademark Kickdrums sound with the ending consisting of a range of different jazz instruments, with the trumpets being the most apparent – It kinda has that Mark Ronson sort of feel to it. Out To Get Me! is different from the rest of the tracks in that for once the lyrics are what make me love it as apposed to just the variety of music, it’s definitely my favourite track on the album. Links to these tracks along with the album are below…
The Kickdrums – Just A Game listen via zShare
The Kickdrums – Personal Calamity listen via zShare
The Kickdrums – Out to Get Me! listen via zShare
All in all it’s easy to recognize that this is a very good album, i might be slighlty harsh with my rating but i think everyone agrees that there is room for improvement. The foundations the duo have set with this album are solid, now all they have to do is build on it by mixing it up a bit, maybe adding a few guest appearances. They dont have to go overboard like N.A.S.A. but a few appearances wouldn’t hurt. It’s definitely worth looking out for the duo in the near future.
Love this band! Thanks for showing me them (: