TRS-80 – Mr. Kickass – Review

TRS-80

Mr. Kickass (Underground, Inc)
by Lex Marburger

Sometimes, when you get a coupleathree knob-tweakers together in a room, everyone gets all serious and tries to make a great electronica album. What usually comes from such a situation is 90% of a Death in Vegas album (the 90% that’s pretentious crap, that is). Either that or you get some horribly forced-goofy Land of the Loops/Fatboy Slim knock-off. But sometimes, just sometimes, you get a brilliant pile of beats and noises that gets those little bits of brain that still have a sense of rhythm and style really jumping. Something like TRS-80 would do the trick. Imagine The Orb out on the cold streets of Chicago, scrounging for beer money. Or DJ Spooky hopped up on something speedy. Or even those wacky German DHR freaks on something definitely not speedy. Mr. Kickass is an album made by, and for, people who don’t stay in the basement. Hell, they probably don’t even have a basement. They’d have thin-walled apartments, a mostly-empty fridge, and cigarette burns in the carpet. How’s that for livin’?
(PO Box 16008 Chicago, IL 60616)