THE KINBOTES (NY) 

"Kinbotes" 1986 (Nix –342) 

Maybe the ultimate DIY lo-fi LP in rock history, putting Royal Trux, Sebadoh and all their 90's/2000's clones to shame. The recording and playing is crude and inept, but the songs all have clever lyrics and catchy melodies. The band is named after a character from Nabokov’s ”Pale Fire” who commits suicide at the end, an irony as tragically, one of the members later did so in real life. The opener, ”I Love Rock N Roll”, sets the tone with its scathing sarcasm about the (then) current state of rock music (”Today there’s more talent in rock & roll’ today’s singers sing about uplifting things.” and ”Don’t you think that Prince is better than Little Richard; with that pompadour, he looks like LITTLE RICHARD.”) The feedback-laden string-shredding guitar solo (if you dare call it that) beats out any other 80's/90's VU/Lou Reed wannabes. ”Rock & roll is worse than (arbitrary or our material). It’s excessive and it ruins songs!” The next song, ”Hang Around”, is a jaunty Kinks-influenced ramble with Ray Davies inflected vocals, and is as sloppy as anything the Davies Bros ever concocted. These two songs pretty much dictate the intended musical direction of the whole album - VU lo-fi sleaze melded with Kinkdom melodic sensibilities on the slower and less frenetic songs, though they are as lo-fi as the rockers. There is one other song worth singling out. A clumsy epitaph for Ian Curtis veers into a music hall chorus about ”The King of Comedy”. It has one of the more memorable attempts at rhyming (”Ian Curtis was a true original. His Jim Morrison influence was so subliminal.”) as well as a genius fragmented attempt at a piano solo that literally runs out of gas after about 10 seconds. The cover is as lo-fi as the sounds it contains. A wraparound slick is pasted on so it covers the LP opening and must be slit open to remove the record. The primitive cartoon-like drawing of the band shown as a trio even though they were a duo - the third is a friend who is listed as a member - or is it really Charles Kinbote himself? [MA]

THE KINBOTES 
The Kinbotes 
(Slowboy) 

The Kinbotes are named after the protagonist of Nabakov’s famously tricksy Pale Fire – a novel sneakily masquerading as an annotated poem. The Kinbotes isn’t anywhere near as ingenious, but you can see why these two art school kids plumped for the name: The Kinbotes is an album of no-fi bedroom pop with a lightly-played postmodern streak. 

Formed at art college just outside of Philadelphia, The Kinbotes brought together a determined non-musician (Nat Hirsch) and a trained guitarist (David Cateforis). Recorded in a dorm room, The Kinbotes is unapologetically scrappy, full of bum notes and iffy tunings, but highly charming nonetheless. The presentation is sometimes wilfully cruddy – try ‘Gingerbread Man”s mangled jangle- but much of The Kinbotes’ charm comes down to its open-hearted songwriting: ‘Julie Don’t Care’ successfully mimics Transformer-era Lou Reed, and ‘Like A Movie’ is just adorable. The air of enthusiastic amateurism makes up for some of the ropier tracks, and the rough production – it’s essentially a glorified demo tape – works to its advantage. 

Sadly, Hirsch suffered a head injury in a car accident in the mid-1990s, and eventually took his own life. This maiden reissue arrives through German label Slowboy, and is limited to 200 copies.

There aren't many albums like the lone LP from the Kinbotes, and I like it that way, mainly because no one could really touch the essence and atmosphere contained within the LP. For years little was known about the album, aside from it being presumed to be from NYC (the label, Nix, was located there). No one really knew much about the Kinbotes, as they weren't part of any 'scene', instead falling into a category I like to call 'bedroom pop', simply because there is a lo-fi feeling to the album, and it's clear this was, like many private LP's coveted by collectors, the brainchild of some determined people, and something no major label would touch with a ten foot pole. 

Recently, this blog uncovered the story of the Kinbotes, and I recommend you read it, as well as listen to several songs from the LP:  http://bubblingdusk.blogspot.com/2009/11/kinbotes.html 

Once you read the story, the LP can be seen in a different light; it's very sad that Nat, the man essentially behind the Kinbotes (not that Dave wasn't a major part, but as Dave states, much of the ideas and visions came from Nat's mind) took his own life, considering his deadpan critique of Ian Curtis's suicide on "The King of Comedy". 

Does this LP deserve to be reissued? Yes. I was lucky enough to be given a CD-r copy by a close friend who had a copy of the LP; copies do float around, but until I can track one down, I'll make do with the CD-r. Lots of lesser interesting and, frankly, crap albums have managed to get the reissue treatment, and are labeled as 'lost masterpieces', when in fact, they are doo doo. (that's not to say there aren't some lost masterpieces...) The Kinbotes is a lost masterpiece waiting to be discovered by listeners, and until it gets it's full praise, it will be a favorite of the few that know of it by word of mouth.

Reposted from Victim of Time

Adorned with three roughly hand-drawn visages on a wrap-around paste-on cover—replicated handsomely on this reissue—1986’s lone album by the Kinbotes on the small NY label Nix is a mysterious and intriguing one. A hand-writ mockingly intellectual dissection of their music features on the rear fold, and the liner notes—presented with love and detail by occasional Ugly Things scribe Jack D. Fleischer—reveal the work was cut by just a duo. Vocalist/lyricist/conceptualist Nat Hirsh and Dave Cateforis met while attending Philly’s small liberal arts college Swarthmore, and later cut this collection of tracks in Hirsh’s dorm room. The lo-fi, ramshackle, inept nature of the recordings present the group more akin to the UK DIY profiled in Chuck Warner’s Messthetics series, and make early Beat Happening sound like a polished outfit. But, most interesting is that some genuine pop songs live within their deadpan, tongue-in-cheek humor, at times sounding like a seriously damaged example of the ‘80s C86 scene. 

Hirsh emotes in a monotone similar to Lou Reed and Jonathan Richman, most evident on the gently strummed coming of age tale set to tinker-toy piano “Julie Don’t Care,” a completely arresting tune in defiance of its ramshackle nature, dark humor is shown in the piano-led recitation “The King of Comedy”—both referencing the Scorcese film and mockingly reflecting on Ian Curtis’ suicide, deadpanning: “Ian Curtis was a true individual / that Jim Morrison influence was just subliminal…”—while “My Baby” offers an other-worldly, deconstructed ‘60s punk tough chick churner. Both working soulful, bubbly basslines “Gets So Hard” and “My Lucky Day” supply outstanding hooks, with the former inserting rapid-fire No Wave funk riffing into the mix, and a trio of tracks (“Could You Tell Her for Me,” “Gingerbread Boy,” “Like A Movie”) quite oddly sound like alt-universe jangle-pop. 

If this is a "New Wave" record, it’s a wave I’m still waiting on, touching on bubblegum, British post-punk, light C&W influences, ‘60s punk/psych, and ‘80s pop through a skewed prism—while still somehow still sounding coherent—replete with cardboard box drums, primitive drum machines and sincere execution. The Kinbotes is a top pick for me—the replications of a personal manifesto/press release, and contemporaneous press gracing one side of this reissue’s insert only adds to the pleasure.