Kilowatts :: Problem/Solving (Artificial Music Machine, CD)

(08.25.05) “Two Days Off” lands like a probe android from a distant galactic nebula where light and energy have fused into a pulse wave of pure funk, and this robot is just stomping through my house, pulse-waving my toaster into a dance machine, transmogrifying my refrigerator into a beatbox bubble device and snap-crackle-popping my dishwasher into a radio transmitter capable of sending signals all the way back THERE to let them know he has landed and has started converting this world into a free funk zone. Really. That’s the opening for Kilowatts’ Problem/Solving.

Kilowatts has tapped into a thick power source, maybe even a fat pipe all the way back to the nearest grid transformer. While light keyboards whistle past you in “Scraped on the Way Out,” there’s a growling turbine working through some rather heavy angst, banging and thrashing about in the studio in an effort to break free from the sound-proofed room. Kilowatts may be “machine” music but there’s a heart full of passion and distemper pushing the buttons on the
electronic equipment, playing out tiny instrumental stories of heartache and heartbreak. A wordless voice soars skyward in “Rocketeer,” lifting an anthem towards heaven, and the only thing preventing this voice from disappearing into the sky is the digital slice and dice that has been done on its contrail. The voice has too many holes—too many glitches and hiccups—to get the lift it needs to escape.

“4am Highway” shuffles in the dust of empty roadways around a deft keyboard melody, a grumbling basso adds weight to the proceedings like the near constant passage of heavy freight trucks rattling on through the night to distant destinations. Dust stirs up in their wake but it doesn’t do much more than leave glitter on the top of their sound. “Enter Lily” perambulates through a field of tall grasses with a hint of steel guitar in the wind and the bell-like melody of a old analog keyboard playing to a trio of string players while “E Suffix” returns us to the space music of “Tank Park” with whirls of space dust chiming and ringing off slowly evolving melodies.

Sure, machines can’t get pissed off or cry, but they do what we tell them to do. Kilowatts has programmed a room of synthesizers to argue and shout and laugh and weep like a gymnasium of over-excited teenagers. It is cloudbursts of sturm und drang followed by patches of sunlit innocence. It’s like being small again and only being able to express yourself with sounds. Big fat sounds with lots of kilowatts.

Problem/Solving is out now on Artificial Music Machine.

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