Review Summary: Stay hidden.
Kimono Kult, the brainchild of Swahili Blonde’s Nicole Turley, is quite the odd creation. Billed not only as a “supergroup”, John Frusciante, ex-guitarist for The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, current guitarist for The Mars Volta, are immediately mentioned only for the purpose of getting people’s attention. However, Turley played 90 percent of the instruments on this particular EP, and was the main songwriter; fully contradicting the idea that Frusciante and Lopez are the heads of the group.
Getting to the music,
”Hiding in the Light” is a frustrating experience from the get-go. Lending her vocals to the EP is Bosnian Rainbows’ Teri Gender Bender, singing completely in Spanish. Bender’s delivery, while a bit off-putting, is most definitely the most pleasant part about this album, though that isn’t saying much. An absolutely glaring problem that is evident throughout the EP is the poorly-handled instrumentation, put in the worst possible places without any thought whatsoever. And at some points, it just bogs down the lyrics, and any nice parts that could’ve been discovered had there been less pointless overdubs that were possibly put there for the reason of being “unique” or “weird”. A prominent example of this issue is on opening track
”Todo Menos El Dolor”. Here, the Kult had the idea of putting a mish-mash of strings, synths, and beats over an extremely loose beat just for the sake of being improvisational. Thinking about it, it is quite an astoundingly poor decision that makes one doubt the professionalism of this supposed “supergroup”. Other tracks, such as
”La Vida Es Una Caja Hermosa” also suffer from this great dilemma, however it isn’t as noticeable. Only on the final track,
”La Cancion De Alejandra”, is there some semblance of an actual well-structured instrumental track; with little “random” strings or synthesizers to get in the way of the vocals, and by extension, the original composition itself.
Only being eleven minutes long, there isn’t much to praise about a subpar EP such as this. Plagued with a lack of effort, and the idea that failed to break through the dull, disengaging music, Kimono Kult should just stay
Hidden in the light.
Highlights:
”La Cancion De Alejandra”
