REVIEW | KULT KYSS| GRIFT

05.06.17

You’d be forgiven for thinking you’re listening to Underworld or Hot Chip in the first few seconds of Kult Kyss’ second single Waterbaby. That is until Haxx’s Grimes-esque vocals bounce in over the synth beats which are cleverly injected with just enough Afro funk to make the JJJ programmers wet their high waisted pants. ‘You’ve gotta get over it!'  she proclaims, while singing through the empty corridors of an abandoned Disney™ Castle (or maybe that’s a Crystal Castle)? Unfortunately, Kult Kyss have opted to subscribe to the hot new trend of women who sing through their noses like babies who are sounding out their vowels for the first time. And while her lyrics are urging us towards an ethereal, almost transcendental experience, the beats are relentless and fake hand claps keep slapping us all over the eyes.

I get it, this single is tight, light and full of texture and while I look into my crystal ball to the future, (eg. next summer’s festival season) I see thousands of people licking lollipops at 4am, wearing transparent raincoats and pink fluffy rave pants with no bra, while they dance fashionably to Kult Kyss. These guys are perfectly placed to shoot to the top of the JJJ Unearthed charts and become anointed as new the Australian electronic darlings over the next six months. It just makes me feel sad because it seems they don’t have a lot to say. But maybe that doesn’t matter when you have on-trend tribal looped beats giving way to actual water samples that flow over your castle windows, perfectly propping up your song title in a completely literal way? Because in the final verse you can go out and have a full blown synth bongo fight dance on the castle grounds while the kiddy vocals receive their very own ten piece outdoor choir for the final high pitched crescendo. Waterbaby will probably place Kult Kyss in the perfect position to chart the Hottest 100, bag fashion campaigns, summer festivals - you name it. But I will miss all that because it’ll take me too long to get my reflective rave pants out of storage in time for the summer and all this sugar has just given me a headache. But then this is also why I don’t listen to JJJ anymore. 

-Amanda Laver