SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: JAMES KRIVCHENIA – BLOOD KARAOKE

James Krivchenia
Blood Karaoke
Reading Group LLC

The songs inside James Krivchenia’s abstract work, Blood Karaoke, are nothing if not unpredictable. From duck pond sounds, to sci-fi noises, to wind chimes, there’s a familiarity to each note— literally, like a segment of Ylvis’ “The Fox” in Krivchenia’s “The Science of Imaginary Solutions”. These familiarities take us many places but leave us with a sense of displacement because of how estranged each segment and note feels.

James Krivchenia stands out not only for the weirdness of his music, but for the fearlessness of throwing out any consideration for rhythm, tone, or pitch. Listeners are left uncertain as to what part of a track is intentional— if any, as the entire composition has a musically Dadaistic feel to it. Occasionally there is repetition, temporarily silencing the chaos, as in “Sub – Creational Reality” but it’s no longer an expectation, and instead just an exception to the rest of the album.

Blood Karaoke may not be the album to do much to, everything is happening in it, all at the same time, which if you ignore the inevitable anxiety of listening, you can also appreciate it for its detached eccentricity.

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