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Miss Kittin

Batbox

(Groove Attack)

Looking for Halloween to come a little early this year?  Fire up Batbox from globetrotting French electroclasher Miss Kittin.  “Vampires are asleep / Witches are taking over,” she announces flatly in the pulsating and, yes, bewitching opener, “Kittin is High.” 

Electronic music sometimes gets pegged for lacking a sense of humor (or human emotion altogether), and on first blush, it wouldn’t seem that Miss Kittin would run very contrary to the stereotype.  Her trademark delivery is deadpan and mechanical - but her mischievous streak was laid out from the beginning, as she sullied the memory of Ol’ Blue Eyes in her starmaking “Frank Sinatra.”  Nothing on Batbox is so aggressively in-your-face, but personality is still on plentiful supply, whether it’s the campy frights of “Kittin is High” or the surprisingly straightforward “Play Me a Tape” with its invention to love.  Both tracks are standouts, and both tracks sound better when heard against the full tapestry of the album; taken on its own, “Play Me a Tape” wouldn’t be as disarming.  But surrounded by insistent electronic tracks about ass-kicking and mind pollution and strangers getting on our nerves, its charm is magnified.

The vapidity of celebrity culture does factor into the proceedings, as Kittin “sings” forlornly of “another fading beauty on the Sunset Strip” (“Sunset Strip”) - but this time, it’s a weak link in the chain, built on a perhaps deliberately rote beat and featuring Miss Kittin at her most detached - again, presumably to set the tone, but instead it flatlines.

On “Barefoot Tonight,” the protagonist is confronted with the revelation that the shoes she’s going to take the stage in are, in fact, too high - leaving her to “kick some ass barefoot tonight.”  That’s a propulsive party starter - comfortable territory for Miss Kittin, who’s also a renowned DJ.  But Batbox excels when it delves into its nooks and crannies, and somehow finds cohesion amidst the varied tracks.

— Adam McKibbin

www.kittinbatbox.com/index.html

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