KIDKANEVIL AND DAISUKE TANABE KIDSUKE

It's a beautiful thing when one or more already established artists come together to create something new that embodies and amalgamates each artist's style and dynamic. This much is true of the fantastic new partnership sparked and kindled between British Kidkanevil and Japanese Daisuke Tanabe (sketch of each just on the right here).

West meets East in an array of complex electronica that stuns, enlivens, chills and otherwise masterfully captures the imagination of the open-minded listener.

The album, Kidsuke, released 2nd November this year, marries the structural hip hop stylings of Kidkanevil and the likewisely leaning offbeat flavours of Daisuke Tanabe (whose delicious music we've written about before) perfectly - being similar artists, in that their sound utilises that unique glitchness that you find in the songs of each individual, certainly helps when trying to make an album that works harmoniously. The starting track, 'IntroOoOoO', announces the partnership with brash confidence ("Kid-o-suke!"), there being no coincidence that it is a child's voice proclaiming as much: the album certainly seems to be an evocative playground of the kinds of blips and bleeps that typified the video-game-centric collective childhoods of many people in their 20s now, as well as music box melodies - as in the lullaby-nightlight tones of second track 'Nanotrees (Out In The Woods)' - and merry-go-round aesthetics that otherwise conjure a childlike wonder, or love, for the sounds that make us smile.

That child-proclaimer is a recurring theme in the album, popping up here and there to remind us, perhaps, that both artists doing this for fun more than anything else. A questioning "Kid-o-suke...?", for example, marks the start of 'SGstep', which is a fun, pots-and-pan percussive dubstep-styled track, featuring much modulated synth bleeptude that drip-drops over the sound as a grinding sound comes in and out in waves.

Hip hop, however, is never far away, with the distinctive offbeat of 'MoOoOoOn' housing a foundations for flights of electronic fancy that whizz over and above. Those sounds, at once recognisable as part of both artists' separate repertoire, are heard best in the popping bubble atmosphere of 'Frogs In A Well', the fizzing cauldron of 'Sine Flowers' and the frantic, unworldly sounds in 'Harmonics Pt2'. How emotion can summoned with such obscure, unnatural noises is difficult to say, but it is done so successfully. The feeling, for instance, in the touching melodies of 'The Other Day We Thought Of Our Friends' is quite evident, in the bathtime evocation of 'Super Deformed', and even more so in final track, which even smells and feels like a drawn-out, modern-world goodbye, 'The Last Train'.

That the album should carry a name that is a portmanteau of Kidkanevil and Daisuke Tanabe says as much about the sound therein; it the work of neither artist, it's the work of both, together: it's Kidsuke and it's lovely. Stream it all below.

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Kidsuke // Twitter / SoundCloud / Bandcamp
Daisuke Tanabe // Facebook / Twitter / SoundCloud
Kidkanevil // Facebook / Twitter / SoundCloud / YouTube / Bandcamp / Official site