The fickle indie music scene swiftly makes outcasts of former loves. Trends seem to become passé overnight, and in 2004, few sounds have been more cold-shouldered than electroclash. Sadly, Caroline Herve (aka Miss Kittin) has had to bear that burden. Much of the credit for her previous work went to production partners such as Goldenboy, Felix da Housecat, and The Hacker, the latter of which provided the beats on the 2001 collaboration, The First Album. Despite often working as a co-producer, Miss Kittin has been inadvertently written off as the electroclash gal with the heathen voice, the vixen who rasped atop oily dance jams. Miss Kittin, however, is not only a deft producer in her own right, but through her cover-mounted Muzik mix, On the Road, and Radio Caroline, Vol. 1 she has also repositioned herself as an innovative dancefloor helmswoman.
For her first solo studio album, I Com, Miss Kittin roped in The Hacker and another set of guest co-producers: Tobi Neumann of Peaches' fame and Thies Mynthier of the German poptronic duo Phantom Ghost. The record mixes bed-sweat techno, glaciered electronic wirescapes, and sang-froid sing/speak into a throbbing blend that saunter from desolate love hymns to heaving jams.
"Happy Violentine" is a love song pulled inside out, a track that seems pleased to display its visceral heartbreak. Atop oriental strings and subtle electro-plinks, Kittin juxtaposes ethereal disconnect with cutting, ironic heartbreak, particularly when her detached voice lulls itself into the lines, "Switch me in a stand-by mode/ Until someone presses play."
Retracing that duality, "Allergic" rides pacemaker beats and subtle, revolving synths underneath Kittin's whispered vocals. Gangrenous and toxic, the song straddles the line between tongue-in-cheek irony and outright stupidity, as Miss Kittin tracks the self-adoration behind self-loathing and declares she's "allergic to [my]self." The soft backdrop gives her room to reshape her strange secondhand-English wording, and it results in a glorious confusion that's as intoxicating as it is bewildering.
Perhaps the album's highlight is the spunky ode to computerized pleasure, "Icome.com". Over dense synthlines and quiet, woodblock-beats, Kittin slithers through her pleasures and her foils in a cheap, dirty carol to technological solitude. Creative despondency and inter-wired frenzy collapse upon themselves in a testimonial to self-love, a world where the frameworks of release are flickering blue-screens and spent friction.
Unfortunately, some of Kittin's lyrical deficits undercut her production. "Requiem for a Hit" stumbles out of the gate with the ironic plea, "Show me your tits and let's make a hit," and the phrase doesn't get any funnier when it's repeated ad nauseam. One of the great failures of postmodernism is an inability to restrain our own sense of irony, but here's one shining example of why we must hold tight to that sense of proportion.
"Clone Me" shoulders similar dead weight, as it's forced to carry leaden lines like, "Look at me, myself, and I/ My world is mine so multiply," and, "If my minds you can connect/ With myself I will debate." In a moment of keen synthesis, the album's most banal production mirrors its lyrical void. Of course, for many who admire this French kitty's metronomic beats and elephantine sound, ca n'importe pas-- as the beats throb, the words seal into shape.
