Kid606

In the somewhat rarefied world of experimental electronic music, there are few musicians who provoke such intense and often polarized reactions from their listeners as San Diego’s kid606. He embraces no single musical genre or style, but instead pursues a restless and iconoclastic musical aesthetic. Kid606 is perhaps best known for the joyous/furious mixture of hardcore/gabber, system-overload noise and raging breakbeats on releases such as Don’t Sweat the Technics and Dubplatestyle. Two recent releases – the ambient, melancholic The Soccergirl EP (Carpark) and a 12" release of his remixes/eviscerations of the Misfits’ "attitude" and NWA’s "Straight Outta Compton" (V/VM) – attest to the truly eclectic, boundary-defying nature of Kid606’s musical interests. In a recent e-mail interview, he rejected the notion that there might be a definitive Kid606 style, instead describing his approach in more personal terms. "Musically…as long as it’s got attitude, I’m not specific as to what the music sounds like – I just want it to sound like ME."

It was as a young teen growing up in southern california that the Kid (Michael Depedro) first became interested in electronic music. "There just came a point in my life where I got really bored with everything else and at the same time started hearing all this guitar-based music like Godflesh and Ministry that combined hard rock and electronics, and I just thought, "why don’t people just make music using only electronics?" Then I heard mainstream stuff like hip-hop, New Order, Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, and then Techno Animal, Seefeel, Aphex Twin and Autechre, and it just totally made sense to me."

While still in high school, Kid606 began his association with the vinyl communications label. It was through them that the world was introduced to the phenomenon that is Kid606, with 1998’s stunning Don’t Sweat the Technics. Since then, he has let loose a torrent of mind-bending releases, such as GQ on the EQ, an eclectic compilation of collaborations and remixes of his work; Kid606 and Friends Vol. 1, which was the first release on his new Tigerbeat6 label; and The Soccergirl EP, a particularly surprising, sea-change of a record. As he explains it, the softer, gentler tone of The Soccergirl was not what he originally intended to do: "I didn’t even think to make it like that ‘till the last minute when I realized I didn’t want to do just another release of tracks I just threw together to get out an EP….When the deadline came up, I just got real depressed and kinda went into hiding for a while, until I realized what I really wanted to do was to go through these old tracks I had done and piece together a clearly-themed, totally direct musical story about something I had been through from start to finish, which had been a relationship that ended shortly before that. The fact that [the EP] is subdued and ambient is just ‘cause that’s what the concept called for."

In addition to his new full-length "Down with the Scene" (which finds him back in his old, noisy ripped-up stomping-grounds), Kid606 has a typically aypical-sounding series of releases coming soon to a record store near you. The series will include an album on the prestigious Mille Plateaux imprint; a dancefloor-oriented 12" on Force Inc.; an EP on Kit Clayton’s label, Orthlorng Musork; the second volume of Kid606 and Friends, due out in the Fall on Tigerbeat6; "and" he adds, "of course, some remixes here and there. I really want to do more though. [Remixes] are always so fun and [they] keep me on my toes musically. Being able to play with other people’s music can be a blast…"

-S. Bolle

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