Every few records Miguel Depedro of Kid606 steps away from loose and casual no-jacket-required IDM and changes his tone, addressing his audience with an implied "But seriously..." These weightier releases typically feature nakedly emotional titles: P.S. I Love You, The Soccergirl EP, "Sometimes", "If My Heart Ever Ran Away It Would Be Looking For The Day When Right Beside You It Could Forever Stay". I've always found these records charming, as they convincingly render the dull romantic ache of a young artist who spends way too much time alone in front of his computer. Because of who Kid606 is and what we know of his obsessions, there's a hint that perhaps technology has become an impediment to love.
Resilience is the latest in this line, and here Kid606 really puts himself in an artistically vulnerable place, dedicating the record to his mom, putting a photo of a young child on the cover (looks like Depedro at age three), and proclaiming that he "didn't want to die without releasing Resilience." More than most of his peers, Kid606 understands that weird music without fixed emotional signposts can be shaped by titles and presentation. The unabashedly personal nature of Resilience is supposed to make the music heavier and more resonant, I guess, but something feels off. Ultimately the directness with which Depedro addresses his audience is positive, adding a goofy humanity to his machine music, but the undercurrent of manipulation around Resilience is initially repellent.
Which would of course be easily forgivable as long as the music is good. Resilience is quite different from earlier Kid606 forays into ambient, mostly in that it's not really ambient at all. It is instead a stab at an electronic pop album, with chords, melodies and band-like arrangements. From there Kid606 feels from to wander, from dark new wave in the tradition of Gary Numan ("Done With the Scene" and "Sugercoated") to bubbly reggae ("Phoenix Riddim" and "Hold it Together"). The textures are not novel and are not supposed to be, so a record like this is going to live or die on the basis of its tunes.
A few make it for sure. "I Miss You" has a synth patch that sounds like Joe Zawinul's electric piano from Cannonball Adderly's "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" and Kid606 goes to church with it, piecing together a simply melody oozing with uplift. "Banana Peel" is robotic dub with a real sense of swing that slowly builds its infectious hook over its length, so that when it finally comes together at the end the tension is released toward the sky. And "King of Harm" is a slight step down but still enjoyable, convincing pastoral nostalgia dented in an interesting way by metallic percussion.
If everything here were on par with these three tracks, Kid606 would have something, but the bulk of Resilience consists of indistinct mid-tempo beats and a lot vague loops that don't go anywhere. During certain stretches the music has an oddly narcotic effect, tapping into that distracted alpha state that comes from listening to too many middling records from Morr. That these inoffensively dull tracks are collected as a Big Statement, something the artist has longed to get off his chest, is a little depressing-- and not in a good way.
