Artist: Capitol K
Title: Sounds Of The Empire
Format: Double LP
Label: Planet Mu
Catalogue Number: ZIQ008
Year of Release: 1999
Tracklisting:
A1 Song For Banana (8:01)
A2 Little Submarine (3:37)
B1 Janome Home (4:28)
B2 Doe (My Pooter Sings) (3:35)
B3 People (5:18)
C1 Lagoon (4:11)
C2 Song For Belgium (4:47)
C3 Jump Off The Box (4:35)
D1 Sounds Of The Empire (4:32)
D2 Cosmonaut (6:34)
If you can get past the terrible-titled (and itself pretty terrible) opening number, which is an over-long, shuffling-beat, cheap-sound-effects-fest, then you'll find a good album of electronica in a more laid-back style than you might expect from Mike Paradinas' Planet Mu label. Kind of a cross between Plaid and Plone.
You can still hear Pillow, from the same year as this LP, and an example of the song-based material he puts out, on Capitol K's Myspace page, as well as some more recent tunes as he has just released an new album Notes From Life On The Wire With A Wrecking Ball on Faith and Industry.
Personally, I prefer the instrumentals. Doe, Jump Off The Box, and Side D are highlights, Cosmonaut the only track he puts guitar on that really works. People builds into some nice Mu-style clatter at the end, but not for long enough and with too much feedback.
I hesitate to recommend this; there are some good tunes, but other artists have better whole albums. It's fine, but lacks the inventiveness of your bigger electronica names of the period.
Another reason not to recommend it is that Capitol K himself (Kristian Craig Robinson) appears from his own biography to be a prize pillock. The kind of pretend-dosser who lived in a squat once and calls it, "Investigating concepts of the urban Nomad and psycho Geographer [sic]". I'll write to Shelter and tell them to stop wasting their time shall I? Nob.
There are people who's art you like, who you don't get on with. There are other people you like who's art doesn't move you at all. Then there are average artists who appear, by their own representations of themselves, to be objectionable idiots. I'm putting Capitol K firmly in the latter category.
