If I was to choose one word to describe The Kleptones fourth album in the ‘quadtriptych’ it would be angry. Not a misplaced or random anger, but a righteous one about the state of the world at the moment. Starting with hypnotic Alan Watts quotes and strange spoken word about reality, truth and cake, it seems the cake is a lie?
Now that might put some people off, that this would involve preaching or be all at one level, but no, this is a masterclass on how to keep a flow of emotion going for a long album without it getting too much. A range of emotions are there from reflection to confusion as you go through the album, like some musical Kübler-Ross – and you think it’s gone to the most extreme, then it takes it to 11 when No Parlez kicks in with Run the Jewels meeting heavy rock riffs and all bets are then off. This is my favourite part, it’s very cathartic.
Thealbum just keeps topping itself like that, cycling around through emotions and getting more. Thus it’s actually my favourite of the four albums, because I think with the way things are going, we need music that is the answer to the question ‘when are you going to get angry?’ or indeed as quoted on a previous Kleptones album, ‘you need to get mad’.
Rock, metal, drum and bass, psych, fuzz garage guitar, angry raps and spoken word talking about the state of society and the world, it’s all there. An earlier reflective moment is Red River, a cover by Chrissie Hynde of River Man by Nick Drake, mixed with dark dubby samba beats and psychedelic rock. Indeed it starts with quotes from Apocalypse Now and feels like a nod back to LO and it’s Stygian winding rivers but refactored into a heart of darkness.
And similarly topical and reflective about climate change is Ascending Pattern with it’s quotes from MLK and spoken word laying out the truth about fighting for what is right ‘I said to him – why are you doing all this. He said “I don’t know, we aint gonna win, polar ice caps gonna melt, the tropical forests are going to go away, take away our oxygen, I can prove it on my computer”‘. The ambient beginning goes into a drum and bass track with Julian Cope talking about motherships and stone circles – alienation and alien nations?
Talking about alienation – Life Assurance‘s spoken word over a garage motorik backing about taking creative risks and artistic confusion – confusion as well as anger seems to be a common theme on this album – into the thrash metal of Long Night. Ween becomes Motorhead? It’s hard to separate tracks on this album, so we have Ante Meridien with its Slayer style guitars (indeed it might be Slayer, I’m not up on them) and Opus 3 vocals.
Other Kleptones highlights – or is it more darklights? include Alter Piece with it’s Origin Unknown – Valley of the Shadows synth sample – a Future Music CD 1 sample fact fans! – flowing into Howling Forever with it’s Kill Bill stabs and NASA samples with TV on the Radio ranting over the top. Talking about howling and ranting, we have Screaming Forever where XTC is putting the world to rights over a hyper rock chugging beat.
And the screaming sky won’t let me sleep.
Screaming Forever
The stars are laughing at us,
As we crawl on and on across this antheap.
And we have the appropriately named Psych Out, with a very psychedelic schizophrenic heavy interlude with Running Interference following. Psych Out reminds me of Lemmy era Hawkwind with more brass, electropop and Underworld lyrics and quotes about letting your rage explode mixed with King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man.
Running Interference continues this with a more soulful jazz break into some muezzin style chanting (Leftfield?) and heavy guitars and then the recording session that Art of Noise used for several of their songs, including Close (to the Edit). Can I say something? HEY! which leads into Rewind Rework mixing angry heavy riffs and big beats into Roxy Music. Again hyper rock music.
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