Staff Reviews

Kap Bambino - Devotion

Review by John Calvert

On their fifth album Devotion Kap Bambino are true to the form, consequently vomiting out an early contender for the indie community's best dance record of the year. Or, that is, the most danceable.»

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'devotion', kap bambino's fourth album, is based on a few simple rules: each song is recorded as though played for the first time, and there was no second take; each live show is played as if it was the final one; each task is executed with a sense of urgency; each decision is made with excess; all the indicators are in the red. to understand the duo you need to let go of moderation. try to capture them: it's too late, they're already far away. like a permanent crash in the sound barrier. eternal youth with almost ten years behind them. the story begins with orion aka groupegris in bordeaux, france, with the creation in 2001 of the label wwilko, a shelter for scummy bands. orion, who already has a reputation on the hardcore scene, also self-produces some material and kap bambino is one of his obscure side projects. caroline, aka khima france, circles the vicinities until she manages to establish herself permanently. and their reputation as punk weirdoes, bellowing nut-jobs and decibel hellcats grew rapidly. since the beginning, caroline martial and orion bouvier chose the concealed path of the beginnings of hardcore. orion, the playful nerd and caroline the whirling fury plugged themselves into a highly charged current with the unique goal to create havoc. the entourage of modern musicians - manager, promoter - that they developed along the way shows their claimed self-sufficiency and preserved amateurism for the essential: direct and immediate contact with their audience, with no distance, not even physical when caroline dives off stage to swim across the crowds. this rapport is fascinating and throwing to most unsuspecting people who struggle to understand what just happened at the end of a two minute song. a quick nave and euphoric rush, even if it means ending-up with a broken tooth. throughout their 12-inches and albums - 'kap bambino' in 2002, 'love' in 2003, 'zero life night vision' in 2006, 'blacklist' in 2009, 'devotion' in 2012 - the band has nourished an outburst of sequences and screams: punk in the digital era. the years have brought some softness to certain melodies, but the sugar comes from a mine and is mixed with gravel. no intelligible lyrics that we might sing along to, no chorus, no surfing on electro trends, no guitar-drum combo on stage to pretend it's rock. anorak-trash, emo-tuning, white ghetto, trendy skateboard, satanic pop, their music is made for the youth of the oecd as lost as all the post-war generations. kap bambino isn't the first nihilistic band, but in their consistency and the logic of their productions, their vitality, their integrity and their modern vagabond romanticism, they have very few rivals.
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