Urlaubshits

Despite having been producing for the last 10 years, and being aligned with Paris’s more discerning circle of electronic producers (Tigersushi, Kill The DJ, Dirty), Krikor’s releases have been sparse, and seem to have flown under the radar. His music is challenging to say the least, occupying the defiantly experimental end of the spectrum. 2004’s “No More OGM” is a discordant, 303-fuelled nightmare trip which rivals Mr. Oizo for sheer abrasiveness, while this year’s Erasure Is Our Ally EP is one of wonky, sonorous house music. Those approaching the album with this experience of Krikor will probably be surprised, as Land Of Truth is almost nothing like his previous solo material. Far from being difficult to listen to, Land Of Truth is a surprisingly accessible album filled with delicate instrumentals, and songs which you could almost call pop, and an album which makes a lot more sense in the context of Krikor’s edit of Q Lazzarus’ “Goodbye Horses” (released in 2007, and available on the Dirty Edits Vol. 2 compilation), a dark 80s synthpop tune, which, with its spiky guitar melody and bass drones, offers a lot more insight into the influences that go into this record than his weird proto-acid past. Of course, being produced by Krikor, pop is a term I use very loosely; the guitars are discordant, the drums heavily compressed, and everything comes at you through a slight psychedelic fuzz, but don’t be surprised if you’re humming these songs to yourself when you least expect it.

But still, the mood that the album creates is difficult to get a handle on, let alone describe. Opener “The Times” is a case in point: a sleazy ballad sung by Battant vocalist Chloé, it uses reversed sounds that phase in and out and oddly tuned guitars to create a sense of shifting unease, it’s not until the honky-tonk piano kicks in after two minutes that all the disparate elements suddenly lock together in an explosion of slightly uncanny elation. There is also an undoubted influence of rockabilly in this record, perhaps most apparent in “God Will Break It All”, where the vocals are provided by Poni Hoax’s Nicolas Ker. Away from his regular band’s Devo-esque synths, his new wave croon becomes more of a growl, and the sound of early punk makes itself more clear, as the slightly weird territory between 60s garage rock and 70s punk that The Cramps occupied is evoked as he screams over thrashing guitars. However, Land Of Truth is not just an album of noisy garage punk, its influences are wide ranging. The disco bassline of “Crackboy” is probably the closest the album gets to something danceable, while “Dogs On Trial”, with its squelchy bassline, piano stabs and drum machine beats sounds like a strange kind of house music. The last track, “The Edge”, with its heavy echo on the vocals, has elements of the pastoral folk which has made Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver so massively popular.

Despite the influences in this album being wide, in Land Of Truth, Krikor manages to create a sound which is is united and coherent throughout. And like his close peer Joakim does successfully with his albums, he manages to be wildly experimental and alienating, and somehow create a pop record all at the same time. The thing that really sticks with you after you’ve listened to this album though, is the sense of a fiction being created; not just a story but an entire sonic world that only The Dead Hillbillies exist within. In this interview with Ponystep, Krikor is asked who the Dead Hillbillies are and who they represent; his answer is that “I needed time to learn the most I could then forget all about it, letting everything go. The Dead Hillbillies are my alter egos, I embraced them then I had to kill them”. This extends to live performances, where he plays everything himself (without a laptop, and with pedals, bass, drum machine). When understood like this, Land Of Truth takes on a new meaning, it is an example of an album as a kind of parallel universe, a bleak world of sonic introspection that does not, and will never exist in the real world.

Download:> Krikor & The Dead Hillbillies - Dogs On Trial

Land Of Truth is out now on Tigersushi

Buy the LP from Juno