Kilo: Kilo

Kilo’s latest, eponymous album is a largely quiet, humble masterpiece of misleading expectations. Over and over, we hear glitchy, random, and largely unappealing intros to songs that turn into dancefloor-ready deep house tracks, continually replacing initial disappointment with eventual pleasure (not to mention a heavy dollop of relief). Second track “Spiegel” follows the formula better than perhaps any other track on the album, first glitchifying jazzy bass guitar samples along with synth and drum noises, creating a pastiche not unlike Kid 606 in a mellow mood, but eventually a backbeat shows up, and all the glitchiness starts to make sense in the context of the song. The guitar punctuates important moments, the synths add some semblance of chordal structure, and you can dance to it — or, at least, you can dance to parts of it. Other highlights like the creepy-crawly “Trauriges Zwischenspiel” and the dancefloor stomper “Backdoors” solidify this enjoyable little release from the Austrian duo. There’s no transcendent moment, and given the expectations-toying nature of much of the release, it’s easy to think of Kilo as better than it actually is; still, 51 minutes of solid electronics is nothing to sneeze at.