Send "Miss Kittin & the Hacker " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Slantmagazine |
 In a citation within Slant Magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Dance Songs, Ed Gonzalez called Miss Kittin & the Hacker's "Frank Sinatra" a "deadpan critique of starfucking nightlife," and that Miss Kittin "makes social climbing sound so stupid and empty, while reveling in it." After spending nearly a decade predictably doing their own thing, Miss Kittin has reunited with the Hacker (a.k.a. electroclash DJ/producer Michel Amato) for Two, the follow-up to their First Album. The earlier album featured tight, claustrophobically self-involved beats and a knowingly chintzy pall. And if, as Ed said, Miss Kittin's vocals straddled the line between satirizing shallow behavior and embodying it, it was thanks in major part to Amato's limited, almost faux-negligent clatter. With Two, he opens up the sound about as far as it can go while still paying homage to early-'80s no wave. Instead of sounding like a remastered ESG rethinking if they're truly "Moody," here the Hacker's tracks sound more like Yaz or Mr. Fingers banging out an alternative score to Koyaanisqatsi. The result is that Miss Kittin's occasionally indifferent interjections and droning croons sound a lot less like parody and a lot more like a woman contented in her superficial surroundings. Social critique aside, Miss Kittin floats on the clouds of "1000 Dreams," firm in her belief that indulging in myriad rewardless sensations will ultimately prove its own reward: "Another chance, take a break, face to face, big escape, rewind and sublime, 1000 dreams to reach the one." Even the titular acronym of the otherwise dubbiest and most remote groove, "PPPO," espouses the Powerful Pleasure of People Objects—not necessarily in that order. The words are flatter, the music is more generically attractive, and maybe we're all getting a little too old for this club....full text |
| Residentadvisor. |
| Despite covering quintessential mainstream '80s anthems early in their career, and then displaying a shiny synth-pop panache on The First Album in 2001, what was always striking about Miss Kittin and The Hacker—both as producers and DJs—was their strong sense of connection to the techno tradition. Whereas various friends from the early days found inspiration in cold wave (Crossover, Mount Sims), Italo (Kiko), EBM (David Carretta, Terrence Fixmer) or anything from house and acid to hip-house and pop (Tiga), Caroline Hervé and Michel Amato have remained faithful to their techno roots, constantly citing Laurent Garnier, Jeff Mills, Drexciya and early Aphex Twin as major influences. Take album opener "The Womb," which has a syncopated, robotic feel that sets the tone of what's to follow: Nothing has really changed for the Grenoble duo, but then again, nothing is ever the same either. This tale of a woman "coming from the underground" and "climbing the social ladder" on her own obviously echoes their own "Stock Exchange"'s main protagonist, but this time, their brand of techno noir is more immediate, seeming less calculated and somewhat rounder. The same can be said about current single "PPPO," with its submarine-like bleeps and abyssal bass line, and "Party in My Head," probably the catchiest and poppiest thing on here. In fact, the only embarrassing moment on Two is their take on Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds." Built on a sole borborygmic synth line and celestial background pads, the track has, musically speaking, the type of timelessness only The Hacker can provide. But the cover heavily relies on a vocal performance that clumsily tries to recapture the bittersweet feelings at the heart of the original; sadly, Miss Kittin, whose voice can convey complex emotions such as scorned love and understood jealousy exceptionally well, somehow sounds too contrived for its own good here....full text |
| Guardian |
| No one does blank, bitchy fashionista ennui quite like Miss Kittin, with her trademark blend of menace and melancholy. On last year's sleek Batbox, she proved there was life in a shtick that, by rights, should have burned out half a decade ago in the dying embers of electroclash. But even as she pulled it off against the odds, one sensed the line between success and failure was being cut ever finer; and, in hooking up with her original partner in crime, the Hacker, Kittin has fallen on the wrong side of it. His skeletal beats have barely progressed since their debut, seven years ago; they certainly haven't inspired Kittin to move out of autopilot. Party in My Head is an exception, enveloped in nostalgia for halcyon nights and propelled by driving bass, but the nadir comes with a rote, depressingly predictable cover of Suspicious Minds....full text |
| Slantmagazine |
| The last time audiences heard from Daniel Rossen, he was paired with fellow multi-instrumentalist Fred Nicolaus, and together as Department of Eagles they churned out the carnivalesque dreaminess that was 2008's In Ear Park, an intimate, warmed-over mélange of renaissance hallucinations and apocalyptic beauty. Now returned to the Brooklyn-based quartet Grizzly Bear, which he joined in 2005, Rossen expands and expounds on that thick, astral sound with Veckatimest, the group's third full-length album. Here Department of Eagles's mad, milkshake-like overtures persist, skirting between nightmarish explosions and otherworldly interludes. Though sometimes directionless, Veckatimest is a fascinating record, an undeniably grand opus remarkable for what it attempts rather than for what it accomplishes. The album's musical skeleton is a patchwork that borrows from the influence of folk torchbearers past and present. At once rife with the warm, well-aged harmonies of Crosby, Stills & Nash and the Beach Boys, the album manages to sponge off various bits and pieces of today's rural revival as well. Indeed, the quaint Americana-cum-baroque qualities of Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver churn beneath the foreboding "Ready" and "Fine for Now," both simmering, sprawling pieces more akin to mazes than songs. Melodies are lush curtains through which human voices barely poke, obscured by splashes of organ, brass, and dozens of other arcane instrument combinations. All lend their aid to the album's organic splendor, a quality in which Rossen and his Grizzly Bear colleagues are clearly infatuated. Yet that obsession is also finely tempered, and patient enough to allow tracks like "Cheerleader" and "Two Weeks" to build from a humble guitar n' piano origin into reverberating ecstasy....full text |
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