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The Kooky Scientist, "Kook Kontrol"
A techno pioneer with countless aliases and highly sought-after releases, Fred Giannelli still apparently holds quite the grudge against former collaborator Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. Instead of bitterly lambasting the transgender icon, this veteran producer displays his biting sense of humor in this electrifying yet cheeky live document.
A case could be made that Giannelli deserves most if not all of the credit for the acid house recordings disseminated by Temple Records and Wax Trax! during the late '80s and early '90s. Undeterred and undoubtedly educated by his tumultuous experiences in Psychic TV, Giannelli went on to make his mark in the thriving '90s global techno scene with slab after slab of dancefloor-ready vinyl for Plus8, Sahko, Superstition, and his own Telepathic imprint, to name a few. The Kooky Scientist, the name that graces much of his output for Richie Hawtin's untouchable techno label, has released very little over the last decade under perhaps his most well known moniker.
Thankfully, the self-released and thus self-financed Kook Kontrol remedies this. Spanning about 58 minutes, the audio here comes from a December 2006 gig in San Francisco. Giannelli claims that the subsequent performance was inadvertently inspired by spending much of that day in conversation with seminal industrial artist and friend Monte Cazazza, whose limited output includes a record on Telepathic. This extended encounter puts some of the track titles and certainly the artwork, a parody of the standard Psychic TV live album template, into context, though the liner notes provide no clear indication whether or not this thematic structure had been his intent all along.
From the opening William S. Burroughs cut-up to segments marked "Bring Me Thee Head Ov Genesis P-Orridge," Kook Kontrol could be superficially viewed as an immodest hour-long snipe. Yet when stripped of the anti-PTV motif, listeners are left with all the hallmarks of Giannelli's infectious, club-friendly sensibility. Seamlessly mixing with Ableton Live software, Giannelli presumably worked that Californian dancefloor nice and hard with acidic bass lines, sumptuous stabs, and steady machine beats. Some of the tracks come from previous releases, such as "A Little Older, A Little Bolder," while others appear for the first time. Highlights include "Precious Prescience" and "Delirious Delores," though the entire set flows logically with natural peaks and rare valleys. As A Guy Called Gerald did with his Proto-Acid in 2006, Giannelli charts a similar course with this non-stop mix of original material that references the past (of techno as well as his own), while simultaneously challenging the future.
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