Earnest, poetic, resistance techno, “Kill The Bill (My Spirit is Not For Kettling)” EP functions equally as energetic dance music and poetry. Released on Glasgow-based label Optimo Music, Joshua Idehen & Loor cinch the careful balancing act of writing deep, insightful lyrics for modern techno.
There’s a certain crowd of techno purists who are staunchly against lyrics of any kind in techno music. Sure, samples are generally accepted, since they’re defined as a single group of words or phrases disconnected from meaningful context echoing over the beat and considered as basically just another noise. I can see this side of the argument. When the writing is throwaway or beside the point, making vague references to various scenes at a party, blankly evoking drinking and dancing, it’s not contributing much to the music. But when the words are poetry and not taken from somewhere else but written explicitly for the track, like on this “Kill The Bill (My Spirit is Not For Kettling)” EP, the result will interest even the most staunch of gadget-heads. The themes of this powerful project are, in Loor’s own words, “Politics, Hope, Despair, Rage”, stemming from feeling “angry and numb at the same time.”
And the writing is great. It’s rare lately to find really great writing in techno productions, with lines like “How quick things change. How I used to feel safe in these ends. How I used to call my neighbors my friends…Frances Xavier, the patron saint of refugees, come rescue me.” It’s impossible to ignore the directness of emotion conveyed across the EP. There is a sense of musical uncertainty as the searching and foreboding topline melody belies the bassline, chugging like warehouse techno.
“Admiring the luxuries from distant shanties… anyway, things are bad. The phonelines are dead. The road is dark. Is it even a protest if your oppressor said yes?” The closing lines of this “Kill The Bill (My Spirit is Not For Kettling)” EP are cheeky, pithy, and stunning. A propellant electro baseline underscores the urgency of the message. The specificity and immediate emotional resonance of phrases like, “I make a shadow and walk towards the sun, remind myself I’m a work in progress” further drive this message. “Faces on the screen keeping me disturbed while the whole world burns.” The percussive rhythm is agitated, the melody line somehow more hopeful.
Out of nowhere, the final track opens with breezy jungle-house as a gleaming synth climbs skyward. This is like the blank screen after the television has been turned off; you are left to contemplate alone all the violence, injustice, and unease that this release has so sharply chronicled.
This “Kill The Bill (My Spirit is Not For Kettling)” EP is protest music that sounds like the protest is already happening somewhere and we need only to find it to take up banners ourselves and join the ranks. It is precisely this defiance that makes the poetry in the music come alive.
-Winston Mann
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