Release Date: 29 August 2005
Song Count: 12
Duration: 32 minutes, 4 seconds
Rating: 2.7/10
Description:
A rather mysterious face in the world of niche electronic music, Shigeru Ishihara, known his stage name DJ Scotch Egg, is a producer who has created aural pieces that aim to shatter the conventions of what is considered "music" since the early 2000s. His debut album from 2005, KFC Core, emerges as a challenger for one of the most unconventional full-length records out there, taking particular elements from Chiptune, Gabber and Breakcore and pushing them to their absolute extreme whilst also experimenting with whacky song structures.
Most of the tracks on this album are short and explosive, their sonical contents on all fronts designed around being harsh to listen to for the average listener. The rapid and organically abrasive nature of Breakcore combined with bouncing, repeated kicks and beats not unlike Hardcore electronic music and bite-like tunes of Chiptune that are far from afraid to even use melodies from actual video games like Tetris all make up for a strange yet workable collection of sounds and samples to stitch together. The tracks also individually vary in terms of listening harshness, with some of them taking a much louder and noisier approach than others do - the likes of "Scotch Heads" and "Scotch Attack" come in fully swinging, whilst "Scotch Land" and "Scotch Out", though still far from exempt from the natural glitchy roughness, are far more sparing to the ear and brain.
This all is topped off by the closer and longest track by a mile, with a staggering 13 minutes compared to the average track duration of less than 2 minutes that all of the other tracks have, "Knock Knock Sandwich Next Door", which starts off rough and noisy as expected, before falling into complete silence at the 52-second mark and not resuscitating whatsoever until over 5 and a half minutes in, where the rest of the track is spent building up an extremely subtle instrumental with guitars, bass and a drumkit under a long, idle conversation playing out atop it - and it all ends after seven more minutes, without building up anywhere. It is a deeply confusing piece, with the only connecting thread and recurring topic being KFC and chicken, which shows up during the talking in the second half.
In spite of going in with high expectations, KFC Core was unfortunately not a record that managed to deliver on its ideas and promises on any fronts - the harsh moments and songs, though conceptually interesting, collapse under their own weight before they manage to lead to a satisfactory conclusion, the order and structure of the entire package feels very disjointed and uncoordinated, and the final weapon it had in store - the extra-long track - left things on a particularly awkward note by not sonically connecting to the rest of the album's music either. Though DJ Scotch Egg has proven himself to be more than a capable producer with the miniscule glimpses visible within this first album, the record on its own ended up doing almost nothing of positive note for me.