Kill the Noise’s Occult Classic: Nihilistic Dance Music

Outside of these more mind-bending tracks, the songs in this track listing range from okay to not-so-okay, but maintain a good sense of variety. Without a Trace is a slow, sensual downtempo-influenced number that sounds like Kill the Noise’s take on a Zero 7 track, while Mine is a reverb-soaked ballad where dubstep seems to be put on the back-burner in favor of an acoustic guitar-laden electronic piece. Although the slower tracks on here can tend to fall into the background, Jake’s talents as a producer and arranger are still very much apparent.

Occult Classic is most definitely a mixed bag of different electronic music flavors, but the album as a whole does feel surprisingly structured. Kill It 4 the Kids does a good job of opening the album with a bang, and All in My Head feels like a climactic finisher, with an epic, tension-building intro that sounds like it came straight off of the Mr. Robot soundtrack. The album is also paced pretty well, with some of the more hard-hitting tracks broken up by the more low-key cuts in the track listing. Despite its lack of consistency and clear sonic focus, Occult Classic is a surprisingly well-structured effort.

In a word, Occult Classic is bizarre. Despite chasing a lot of wholly stale mainstream electronic music trends, Kill the Noise is definitely perceptive when it comes to crafting a whole album and injecting it with enough quirk to make it a pretty memorable listen, and though it is one-dimensional and sometimes downright awful, it’s the sort of awful that’s worthy of listening to at least once just to see how off the rails Jake and his collaborators are willing to go. While it’s hard not to wonder just how many people will still be listening to any songs from this album even two months from now, it is a fun and wild ride for the first listen or two.

(You can purchase Occult Classic at this location, or stream it below. If you’ve heard Occult Classic, let us know what you thought of it. Kill the Noise will also be coming to Portland on October 29th at the Euphoria Nightclub. You can purchase tickets here.)