Miss Kittin & The Hacker-Third Album (2x12"LP)

Label: Nobodys Bizzness
Listen: Link

Year (release): 2022
Genre, primary: Detroit Electro
Genre, secondary: Experimental techno
Catalog number: NBLP003
Country of origin: France

Kittin and the Hacker are back with Third Album, promising a return to what they do best: “our roots, minimal and raw electro.” Musical progression isn’t on the menu. Twenty-one years may have passed since First Album, but you’d struggle to notice it from Third Album’s musical makeup, which offers not so much an update of the duo’s trademark sound as a subtle finishing buff with a soft chamois cloth. The production is slightly slicker, the drums kick a little bit harder, and the overall feel is a touch more robust. But on the whole, the electro drum march, percolating Italo-disco synths, and ominous chords of First Album are present, correct, and in fine working order, leaving the more luminous elements of Two stuffed to the back of the wardrobe like a tie-dye T-shirt at the end of summer. This classically dark look suits them: Third Album is home to a host of wonderfully witchy musical moments, from the clipped acid lines and eerie chords of “Ostbahnhof” to the unnervingly beautiful synth riff that runs through “Retrovision” like an unhappy memory.