Let’s face it: Britain loves nothing better than a scene, a clan, a faction. It gives its youth an alignment opportunity and provides the establishment with an easy prey for when a scapegoat is required for some totally unrelated crisis. The music press has been creating these cults for generations, and resurrecting long dead ones when the next new one is not apparent. The latest incarnation is an amalgam of psychedelia/shoegaze/krautrock. The leading lights on this latest scene are Temples, whose debut will be released early next year, and TOY, whose second album is out now. Notwithstanding almost everything that has been released on the massively influential Northern Star record label.
The KVB are a duo from London and they sit, perhaps not fairly but definitely squarely in the middle of this latest collection of bands. With the eight tracks on Minus One having a running time of just over half an hour it is described by the band as a mini-album. Taking up more than a quarter of the album is the centrepiece “Dominance/Submission”. With its driving bass and drums complimented by a simple lo-fi synthesizer hook, it creates a crescendo of light-versus-dark tinged beauty not found on the other songs. Most of the vocals on the album are a submerged drone, but when they are allowed to move away from the monotone and climb a little higher they work infinitely better as on “Radiant Hour” as well as the aforementioned epic.
Alongside these tracks we have Movement-era New Order bass lines accompanied with the indecipherable vocals on “Again and Again” and also “Kill the Lights”. “Passing By” is a subtler dreamy pop gem that seems to be heading nowhere in particular but benefits from this apparent aimlessness. Apart from these pieces the rest are mediocre attempts at emulating the darker wavelengths on the spectrum provided by the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy album.
This is a mini-album that would be an absolute gem if it was trimmed down to exist as a four track EP. This would allow the more derivative numbers to be shed and see the blossoming talent of The KVB to take its rightful place as leaders of the latest scene rather than just followers in the wake of others.
The KVB – Again & Again
