A little bit of an odd one today, and expect more like it this week or next (hence the part one) I’ve bought so much stuff like this as of late (oddball 70s/80s European rock/electronic music) that it just makes sense to bundle it all together. All of them are radically different though, so if you don’t dig what I’m posting one day, just wait, you might enjoy what comes next.
Their all pretty fucking weird though. Up first, blues krautrock!
King-Kong
Flyin’ Through The Motions
King Kong’s Fight With The Devil, Part 1
King Kong’s Fight With The Devil, Part 2
Time for another episode of “I found a band so obscure that I can’t even write that much about them!”
This album first grabbed my attention thanks to its freaky cover. Which led me to believe at first that it was some piece of early-80s EBM or dark electronic music. Scanning the back cover and seeing that it was a Sky Records release, I decided to give it a spin at the store. I dig most everything Sky put out back in the day, as most of it was early electronic music or kraut/prog with a heavy electronic edge.
This is kind of that, but different than most Sky albums that I’ve bought. It rocks a hell of a lot more. I say “rocks” I don’t mean it in “yo, this shit rocks man” I mean it in the literal (well, more literal than not) sense that it is much more of a rock and roll record than the stuff that I was used to hearing from Sky. But at the same time, it still has a bit of that electronic element that was essential to the Sky label. It’s also oddly bluesy? I mean, no one is going to mistake this for a B.B. King or Stevie Ray Vaughn record, but it has an indefinable blues/southern rock element that’s hard to miss. “King Kong’s Fight With The Devil, Part 1” (great title) is just a few steps away from a Doobie Brothers record. Remove the pulsing synths, put it in a major key, and add some twangy guitar and there you go.
Sadly, the album as a whole is really uneven. Two meandering tracks that are both over seven minutes long bog the whole thing down and come across as either third-rate krautrock and fourth-rate prog. And since their both so damn long they really suck the momentum out of the album proper, which is a shame.
But these tracks are really something special. Album opening “Flyin’ Through The Motions” is a good track that showcases the best of what the album has to offer, its one-of-a-kind mix of European avant-garde with (then) modern rock flourishes. And while I’ve already expounded on the dope qualities of it’s prequel, the album’s final track, “King Kong’s Fight With the Devil, Part 2” is a fantastic closer, showing more of the rock/electronic hybrid sound that should’ve defined the album as a whole.
So who the hell is King-Kong? The main member seemed to be Holger Schmidt. He’s the credited writer for nearly all the tracks, and it looks like he performed most of the instruments on them as well. According to Discogs he was also the album’s producer, albeit under the assumed name of Karl Kraftlos. Aside from King-Kong, the dude has had a lengthy career, however, it would appear that he never quite hit the mainstream. It looks like his closest thing to hitting it big was Tiger B. Smith, a krautrock/hard rock hybrid that has gathered quite the cult following online. Most of his other stuff seems to be electronic/new age/synthpop that, again, failed to make any impact. A lesser known name of the German music scene to be sure, but if you dig on this stuff I think you might want to look up his various other bands too. I know I am now. Tiger B. Smith fucking jam.
Really digging the bluesy vibe!