here's my review from armchair-dj.com. if you visit it on the site it includes links to earlier felix albums, including "i know electrikboy."
http://www.armchair-dj.com/handler.asp?/reviews/k/kittenz_and_thee_glitz.asp ==== Felix Da Housecat Kittenz and Thee Glitz CD, City Rockers/Vital, UK, 2001 On his second full-length as Felix Da Housecat and his first album since 1999's equally first-rate Aphrohead and Maddkatt Courtship outings, Chicago maverick Felix Stallings recruits a stellar cast of collaborators for another excursion into unlikely dance-pop hybridization. Frigid electro, moist slow jams, Moroder madness and house/techno history coalesce into a masterful bricolage that revisits the crossroads of early-'80s clubland without ever settling for cheap pastiche. Even when he's nicking riffs from Hi-NRG hero Bobby "O" (lead single "Silver Screen Shower Scene") or giving Apollonia 6's "Bite the Beat" a Eurotrash makeover ("What Does It Feel Like?"), Stallings exhibits a tight grasp of modern dancefloor dynamics and a gift for filtering his influences subtly. The quiet-storm electro-ballads "Runaway Dreamer," "Walk With Me" and "Pray for a Star" - the latter two originally Maddkatt Courtship b-sides - sound more like Blake Baxter remixing New Edition covers of Michael Jackson classics than they sound like straightforward homages to the Gloved One; actually, though, it's Harrison Crump and Stallings himself on vocals, their limpid posturings sounding for all the world like Craig David after a particularly bad breakup. Several other tracks, meanwhile, exhume the deadpan-chantuese tradition that Chicks on Speed have spent the last couple years mastering but inject the Nico- and Grace Jones-derived genre with a fresh sense of dancefloor delight. Second single "Harlot," for example, finds vocalist Melistar playing the sardonic bitch-queen over buzzing electro beats and an "Electric Dreams" bridge; elsewhere, "Madame Hollywood" lets Hacker and Hell associate Miss Kitten deliver a starry-eyed but knowing little monologue atop a twinkling synth-pop bedrock with a Kraftwerk-perfect melody. As the album progresses, such crossover-ready collaborations give way to manic-depressive electronic symphonies, from the baroque twitterings of "She Lives" to the piano-laced shuffle of "Sequel2Sub." It's here and on the liquid-nitrogen beat-squirts of "Magic Fly" that the producer and his pals prove they can crystallize their myriad influences without resorting to obvious '80s signifiers. Aside from the singles, only the analogue assault of the Junior Sanchez-assisted "Control Freaq" and the leaden thump of the martial "Happy Hour" seem designed for the nightclubs of the Oughties instead of the Eighties. As with many an electronic auteur before him, Felix Da Housecat has left the dancefloor ghetto. Brian J. Dillard ==== -----Original Message----- From: John Bush [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 8:27 AM To: IDM; 313 Subject: [313] Felix Da Housecat Anyone heard his new full-length? Comparisons to Maddkatt Courtship's I Know Elektrikboy? --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
