Review: King Kong Ding Dong – Youth Culture Index

‘Youth Culture Index’ is an album by a band that is, aptly, yes – aptly named King Kong Ding Dong. If I were to get all intense and analytical about it, I’d break down for your convenience exactly how the ‘King Kong’ bit is symbolic of the powerful tribal (is there a more PC-term one could use?) underline that propels itself through the entire album while the ‘Ding Dong’ is a nod in the Philadelphian direction of bandmembers Ben Daniels and Josh Meakim, both of whom also belong to eerie-echo-loving A Sunny Day In Glasgow.

Well, what else could that name possibly mean?

(Step. Away. From Urban Dictionary)

Thankfully it can be condensed to the more mature sounding and keyboard-considerate KKDD. KKDD make music that is predominantly instrumental. Or, to be more accurate, music that is lyrically sparse. ‘Youth Culture Index’ is very – rainforesty. It’s a litle bit Tarzanian. The album appears to unfold in a moist, leafy clearing in an African jungle. The first song’s name is Jample. What does Jample mean? I have no idea, but it certainly sounds right. The song creaks the album open and subsequently launches itself with a backdrop of periodic high-pitched ‘hmm’s set against a rough, muddy guitar riff. There are some plodding African drums (way to perpetuate a stereotype, eh?) before a soaring, semi-wailing, indecipherable – because it’s no language I know – vocal shows up. The theme of the album soon shows itself to be ‘discordance’ as this voice chooses to engage in a furious duel with a woodwind instrument with each struggling to out-waver the other before finally giving up and collapsing in an exhausted puddle of smugly voyeuristic string-plucking.

What is this static? This hazy signal? This… this… this drone? It’s the start of ‘(You’re The) Drone Machine’ is what it is. It’s not 5 minutes of buzz, fear not. The subversive whirr is eventually drowned out by some crazy instrumentation before it disappears completely and along comes another hook not unlike the one in the first track, except instead of a duel, this time it’s more of a dance.

‘Hot Train’ has you wondering how taut those guitar strings really are (answer: not very). ‘Evil’, to the best of my perception, is the only song to feature a real English word. That word being a villanously rattled ‘eeeeevuuuul’ which walks hand in hand with an ominous groan across a dark, gloomy, bass and drum-ridden path.

On the whole, Youth Culture Index is a series of scattered sounds and repeated notes. There is little or no complexity in terms of each instrument’s contribution to a song but the layers, loops and dramatic changes within each track’s personality make it simultaneously minimalistic and elaborate. It also sounds very removed from civilisation. If you still can’t imagine how that could possibly be, why not give some of the tracks a listen on their website? ‘Jample’ and ‘(You’re The) Drone Machine’ remain my favourites while ‘Distant Drums’ gets an honourable mention by virtue of its sharing the same hook as Drone Machine.

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