Katsen - It Hertz [Album]

Thee Sheffield Phonographic Corporation

October 6, 2009, 04:57 PM

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Electronic pop music has often had a bad press. It’s been labelled gimmicky, soulless, clever clogs music performed by knob twiddling egg heads whose idea of a good night out is sitting in Costa Coffee whilst lovingly stroking their MacBook Pro.

Due to the cyclical nature of music and fashion, electronic pop is now de rigeour once more. For example Little Boots, who is in danger of replacing Christopher Biggins' Christmas tree come December 25th lest she curtail her spiralling free-fall into OTT campness, and La Roux, the aural equivalent of ice cream induced brain freeze, are both regarded as being at the vanguard of the new wave of the square wave. But don’t let them put you off electro pop, for beneath the tsunami of hype, deep on the ocean bed of pop, lay hidden treasures. One such undiscovered gem is “It Hertz!” the debut album from Katsen, a Brighton based duo who specialise in sexy, cool, stripped down electronica and demonstrate just how to produce glorious minimalist pop on a budget. Instead of getting hung up on overblown production Katsen concentrate their efforts on what matters, namely writing great pop tunes. Imagine Betty Page fronting a slightly more upbeat Cabaret Voltaire with a predilection for Soft Cell and B-Movie and you’ll be in the right ball park.

“It Hertz” kicks off with the relentless driving energy of ‘Let’s Build A City’ a song full of dystopian paranoia which takes root inside your cranium and stomps about like an army of crazed cybermen on crack. ‘I’m A Doctor’ could be Gary Numan if he’d developed the semblance of a sense of humour and had finally discovered what benefits an effective nasal decongestant can bring, whilst ‘Island In An Island' employs the same sort of hypnotic, repetitive vocal patterns much loved by the vastly underrated Delta Five. They even cover The Passions classic, ‘I’m In Love With A German Film Star’ with no small amount of skill. Title track ‘It Hertz’ is a swirling instrumental which doubtless in the hands of Phillip Glass would be given a pretentious title to lend gravitas such as ‘Carousels In A Future Tense: Movement 9, Rotation 13’ whilst ‘Constellation’ positively shimmers like a star fretted sky.

As the album reaches its climax Katsen save the best for last , ‘Where Nobody Can Find Us’ merges euphoric trance, ‘Thieves like Us’ era New Order and the pop sensibility of The Human League (before those two girls from Woolworths got all uppity ) to devastating effect. The album concludes with the Dubstar-esque ‘Florian,’ a hauntingly beautiful song suffused with a sense of yearning melancholy which one imagines could coax tears from a statue. Katsen have painted a musical landscape that conversely manages to be retro yet futuristic, aloof yet imbued with heartfelt emotion After all, as Roy Batty finally discovers in Bladerunner, cold analytical intellect and logic devoid of empathy and emotion are essentially empty and meaningless. The machines may well be taking over, but Katsen demonstrate these machines have human hearts.

The future’s bright the future’s Katsen .

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