Kerosene Comic Book – The 420 Tape II
4/5 stars
Kerosene Comic Book (KCB) is not a band, or a label – they’re a collective; more a consistent brand than a consistent lineup. Think Tumblr, in-jokes, Drake-worship and drugs. KCB know who they are now, and this is possibly their best tape yet.
Aptly titled, this is the kind of thing you put on as the afternoon wears its way into the evening. On my fourth listen through, I still find myself staring out the window while the clouds change and the birds flirt, ignoring the emails from my editor and thousands of assignments I should be starting. But I’m getting ahead of myself. This is electronic music, mostly instrumental, always warm. Often there is reverb, clicks, bubbling, incomprehensible vocal samples. Sometimes there are stuttering drums, sometimes there are old karate-film samples – because while there is no rapping here, you can feel hip-hop’s influence throughout. We get very dancey, but very introspective too.
KCB’s sound is consistent enough for them to feel like a musical collective, rather than just a geographic/social one, even if, as member Skymning says, they are all in “the same age bracket in the same country”. While spanning genres of electronic music, there is a certain feel maintained here, one that makes this a hard tape to put on for a single song and then turn off. Of course, there are highlights here – particularly Career Girls’ ‘#00FFFF’ (a colour code for light aqua) and Race Banyon/Eskimo Eyes’ ‘The Way That I Do’ – but this is cohesive enough to be listened to as a whole, not just mined for keepers.