King Midas Sound
London based dub explorers King Midas Sound stage show resembles a voodoo ceremony with Roger Robinson dressed as a 1920′s traveling blues artist, Hitomi randomly jumping around like a Japanese she-devil and Kevin Martin doing God knows what on the electronics to make sheer walls of noise/bass. Every song was cranked up to 11, morphing lovers rock into industrial strength sonic warfare. Landing somewhere between the apocalypse, shoegaze and bashment dancehall, the distortion shattering expectations. King Midas Sound’s first album Waiting For You is all about absence striking in spatial terms– bass throbs, snare hits, and voices, usually broodingly quiet or tautly fretful, reverberating in sonic dub chambers that practically dwarfed them a thousandfold.
Taking its sonic cues from the ghostly falsetto of poet Roger Robinson and Hitomi’s banshee wail, Waiting for You echoes with quiet desolation, but there is also immense tenderness and warmth. Their second album Without You, a revoice/re version album that largely pulls off the rare feat of adding to its source material’s mystique without necessarily displacing it. Without You featured re versions and re vocals with Flying Lotus, Mala, Cooly G, Green Gartside of Scritti Politti, Lichens, Kode 9, Spaceape and Gang Gang Dance. Waiting For You and Without You are both available on Hyperdub Records.
