- Good things are worth waiting for. Sydney producer-performer Louis Isaac AKA Kid Fiction has made us wait a decade for his debut, solo effort and that’s a long time but it may be just about worth the time invested.
In reality the wait’s been just about over for quite some time with most of the Kid’s self-titled six-tracker doing the rounds as singles before now. They’re worth it too, infectious little ear-worms that they are and that’s despite the urgent, political tension of this EP, that occasionally, in frustration, spills over. It manifests most strongly in opener, Damn (3,000 Ft.). Against the sparse, clinical beat background Isaac’s quiet but high and sweet voice delivers an impassioned invective against political apathy. The slightly oblique allegory -likening indifference to an oncoming plane crash- still hits alarmingly hard for a sugary r’n’b tune: “damn, we hit engine troubles in mid-air / and all of these motherfuckers want to run for the covers / they just don’t even care!”
The synths and beats don’t ever let the tension dissipate, providing a natural segue into the increasingly insistent dance propulsion of You & I. A collaboration with Melbourne’s Alex Vella-Horne, the vocals are simple, repetitive and impart an unnerving quality to whatever relationship the pair are duetting about. The syncopated rhythms and dark, winding synth harmonies give the track a Euro-inspired feel with maybe a touch of UK Garage in there. One of the best things about Kid Fiction is how thoroughly he subsumes his influences: suturing styles together so that they seem achingly familiar, until you turn your full attention to them and realise that this isn’t what you thought it was, exactly, at all.
I guess that’s true of She: I heard it described as footwork. Fiction is a fan of the likes of DJ Rashad and Teklife and it’s got the same instrumental ingredients, for sure. There’s a little of the rhythm in the pattern of the hi-hats, but all of footwork’s intensely repetitive onslaught is replaced with Fiction doing an impressive rap-r’n’b meld, complemented by bluesy synth highlights. Whatever you call it, it works a charm.
Things get rhythmically that much more interesting as the EP progresses. Egyptian Reeds runs samples of vinyl scratches through a slow phaser by the sound of it, pairing them up with synths that run right from the bass to the treble, all of them pulsing like a cloud of jellyfish. It builds in layers to a climax that is, -ever-so-slightly-disappointingly- a little more static, though the layered details forming a construction that is in and of itself impressive.
The final cut, Silence Is Golden, one of my favourites, is one of the more recognisable, stylistically. If only because it follows the path cut across bass music by fellow Aussie, Ribongia. Like Ribongia it borrows liberally from African dance rhythms to build the most infectious syncopations on the foundation of shuddering bass. It’s a very pleasant farewell, even while Fiction is reprising the disdain with which he opened the EP, in the vocal: “I’ve been waiting here for things to change / But there’s nothing left to say / Silence is golden!”
No it ain’t! Good things may be worth waiting for, but it’s really great that Kid Fiction has finally spoken up. I’m only the latest person to point out an important new addition to Australia’s dance set. Hopefully he has a good deal to say yet, before he ever considers lapsing back into silence.
- Chris Cobcroft.