Seismic Album Review: Lazer Kitty ‘Ruins’ By Ian Stephens

Lazer Kitty– Ruins

(Self Released) CD Release Party at the Vermillion on June 16th<–(click for full info)

This week there was equal beauty and sadness when Ray Bradbury, the visionary science fiction author, passed away during the once in a lifetime event of Venus’ transit across the face of the Sun. Once asked about the creative struggle and the perpetual war of the head and the heart Bradbury was quoted as saying, “Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.”

RUINS, the instrumental debut of Lazer Kitty takes a cue from this advice. The resulting nine-track plunge is a genre-bending flight that judiciously splits time between gliding and g-forces. The jump point, “Revolutions Per Second”, sets the tone as a defiant, optimistic leap that insists on soaring through space instead of just floating in it. This out of control, in control style is the perfect sound picture of free falling sonic wing construction.

To describe the musical foray of Lazer Kitty it would be fair to mention cosmic aspirations, Ray Bradbury and the space rock genre, but slapping that label on RUINS is like describing the space shuttle as an adequate commuter plane. The problem with “space rock” is its typical invertebrate drift, like an un-tethered half-baked astronaut eating freeze dried ice cream and floating around, it’s nice but dammit we’re in space…let’s go see something fucking cool already!

Lazer Kitty sheds this stigma with aplomb. The strength of RUINS is its backbone, well that and the audacity to strap some aggressive rocket boosters to a host of ambient textures that know when to float and when to boldly go into hyper-speed and actually take us somewhere. Contrasting textures illustrate a human immersion in a world that is often depicted as foreign. Synths and pads take a backseat to tightly cracked snares and stark piano melodies. Digital layers yield to organic instruments that never lose touch with the humans moving them forward. With each track its own self-contained journey, RUINS is more space travel than space rock, more astronomy than cosmology.

There’s an unpretentious ambition in RUINS, an epic experimentation with palpable energy that draws from humanity’s most exclusive trait, our ability to play the role of galactic spectator. It’s about time someone reminded us that if we are indeed the lone sentient beings capable of measuring ourselves against the context of the universe we might as well have a kick ass time doing it.
8.3
Ian Stephens