While perusing the shelves of Tower in search of the [yet to be released] Destroy All DJs mix CD on Cleopatra, I stumbled across Keoki’s Kill the DJ CD. Now I would typically despise Keoki, but curiosity got the best of me and I purchased it. Read on for my brief review.
In a nutshell, Kill the DJ is Keoki’s attempt at a 2 Many DJ’s style mix CD, but with a new twist in that much of the music featured is reworked and rerecorded in more “modern” (electro) styles. So instead of hearing the original Bela Lugosi’s Dead from Bauhaus, you’ll actually hear the Godhead version. There are quite a few of the original artists also mixed on the CD, so it’s not a complete karaoke fest.
I will concede that there are a lot of great covers on the CD. The Leaether Strip remix of Are Friends Electric? stands out, along with the Bellatronic version of The Walk. I found that the better material is actually near the beginning of the CD, but as the mix progresses, the whole thing loses momentum and just fades away into boredom. The biggest problem, though, is that the mixing is rushed and poorly executed in some parts of the mix. It’s not like Keoki is trying to pull any of this off live, right, so why aren’t the mixes dead-on?
The Cornell Daily Sun has a scathing review, stating:
I’m going to be completely honest with you. I wish this CD were never made. Otherwise I wouldn’t have had to sit through all 29 tracks of the mind-numbing techno drudgery that is Kill the DJ. The inevitable pun is the artist’s own damn fault: someone should kill Keoki.
Now, I certainly didn’t think it sucked to the extent of wishing that the CD “were never made.” I just wish I hadn’t spent $15 on it. What I do hope is that Cleopatra learned something from this trainwreck and will do a better job with their release of BP vs Effcee’s follow-up Destroy All DJs. We’ll see come March 9th.
3 Comments
….Kill me please.
then ill be away from you jaded bitter journaLISTS!
You have no IDEA. HOW much i wish.
you would, kill yourself on my dancefloor instead.
keoki
http://www.djkeoki.com
Your useless words are falling on deaf ears, Matt Hite.
I don’t see thousands of people flocking to see you spin a set of records.
Hell, I don’t even know who you are.
As they say, those who can’t DJ will critique other DJ’s who are making things happen.
There is nothing constructive about what you are saying.
There is nothing to be learned from any part of your statement.
Why bother writing, then?
And whoever wrote that write up for the Cornell Daily Sun should be fired.
We’ll never see them in the New York or Los Angeles Times anyway.
This life is about making things better.
Perhaps you should attack and write something about the record industry that hampers artist creativity expecting them to make top 10 hits with a formulated music script.
Maybe you should look into why artists can’t, particularly DJ’s, get their “vision” packaged up in full-length real time.
Records execs don’t want art, they want the most bang for the shortest buck.
Kudos to all independents who still seek after their true passion-creativity and exploration.
Like Keoki said, I’d love to see you get out there on the dancefloor and kill your old “dead inside” self on his dancefloor.
Get out of that self-imposed box, Matt, and step into the revolution.
~M~
I’m simply a consumer who purchased “Kill The DJ” and decided to publish a review of it on my own personal blog. That’s what I do here — talk about music.
As to having personally upset the artist with my opinion — for that I really am sorry. I’m sure he’s a decent person and in retrospect saying that “I wish I wouldn’t have spent my money on the CD” is probably akin to calling someone’s kid ugly. On the bright side, there seem to be a number of reviews on Amazon that give praise for the CD.
Welcome to the Internet: an abyss of data where this review ends up being the #2 hit for “Kill the DJ” when typed into Google. The end result being backlash from vanity searchers.
Nothing to see here, move along…
Post a Comment