Customer Reviews

First Album

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

hey music freaks. well, if you're readin' this review, you are either interested in this cd or you already own this great album and you want to see what other folks wrote.

lemme tell ya, this minimalist techno album is fantastic. it will have memories of 80's music go screamin' through your brain. it reminds me a bit of Yaz with attitude...the dark half of yaz...the bitter, rough cornered, a bit ragged side of Yaz. Miss Kittin herself has a unorthodox voice that carries loads of "attitude" and plenty of tongue in cheek jabs. the pulsating synth music marches right out of the middle 80's, but it does so in a way that will sound new...it's really a fun cd to listen to. a buddy of mine let me hear a few tracks the other day, and i was hooked...i had to get this summer gem. trust me, one listen to this First Album, and you'll want to hear Miss Kittin's techno purr for a long time to come.

peace,

cic

What's the NYC - Berlin sound?

Sexy... smart.. A minimal electro treatment of 80's new wave with sexy, smart, and provocative lyrics.

Power politics with a female attitude...

This album will make you shake...

Request from the DJ at the next discotheque you dance at...

Miss Kittin & the Hacker sound as if two of your best friends bought a Moog, a Roland synthesizer and a Casio keyboard from a thrift store, set up shop in a garage and started to pump out 80s new wave grooves. You can't really say the music on here is 80s inspired because it sounds like something you would pull off your dusty shelf of 80s new wave records. Rather it's 80s imitation and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

For those who weren't around or barely remember the music of the 80s, this will come off as something fresh and new. Primitive synthesized beats and the flat bored vocals of Miss Kittin (purrrrr . . . it's worth buying the CD just for her). For those like me who fondly remember the music of the 80s, this will seem cute and kitschy yet somewhat tired at the same time. The synthesized beats ARE incredibly primitive by today's standards and it can be a bit hard to listen to straight through. However, when it's good, it's really good.

'Frank Sinatra' is the track most are familiar with. Although it's not a very strong track Miss Kittin's tongue-in-cheek deadpan delivery of the naughty lyrics makes it worthwhile. However, in my opinion the three strongest tracks are 'Walk on By', 'You and Us' and 'Stripper'. 'Walk On By' is just Miss Kittin and the Hacker throwing down a nasty turbo trance groove with a sample from Front 242's 'operating tracks'. 'You and Us' is their dark and twisted tribute to Yaz. The beats are incredibly similar to Yaz's track 'State Farm' from their second album 'You and Me Both'. Coincidence? I think not. 'Stripper' is a subtle take on Depeche Mode. Even the "Hey, hey"s of the chorus are sampled from Depeche Mode's `fools'.

All in all this a fun party disc not to be taken seriously.

i bought this because I was looking for something new, electronic, and fun. It's new (to me). It's electronic. It's fun, kind of. But there's a problem. All the songs are non-distinguishable from the others, in my eyes.

The only one that REALLY caught my attention is "Stock Exchange." It's pretty good... actually, it's really good. I even went out to my car in the snow to grab this CD to listen to JUST that song, oh, and to hear her say "You know frank sinatra? he's dead" I thoroughly enjoy that, even though it's stupid.

I don't know. I guess the reason why this didn't get two stars is because I almost see myself growing to really like this. Almost. I can see myself picking it up just to listen to "Stock Exchange," and then just listening to it in the background while I'm in the internet, and eventually I'll begin to NEED it. I love electronic music. Give it to me anyday over anything acoustic.

I don't know if this has helped much, but if you're reading all the glorious reviews claiming this is the best piece of music ever in the world you'll ever hear, and blah blah blah, just make sure you REALLY listen to the music samples, or something. think about it.

Ladytron is much better, and they're in the same musical vein.

I purchased this CD after listening to the samples and I wasn't sure what to expect. I have to say that this CD is really dynamic, catchy, and reminiscent in a fresh novel way of the 80's new wave music. I am sick to death of guitars so the keyboards and synths. sound very refreshing in their catchy melodies that almost sound percussive. The Hacker is excellent in plugging out the tunes and Miss Kitten does a great job of "sing-saying" the lyrics to the beat. You will not be sorry if you buy it.

This album is completly out of all times. Like a UFO, this album is a real pearl for all the nostalgic people about 80's. Some songs remind Valérie Dore keyboards (stock exchange) or Denki Groove beats (flexibility). The voice of Caroline Hervé (aka Miss Kittin) is very cute and the lyrics (written by her) are very funny and provocative. To resume , this album is a bomb who catch the time of synth musics.

Miss Kittin and the Hacker's "First Album" is a phenomenal piece of work. Miss Kittin's lyrics bristle with chilling 21st century cynicism, humour, sex and violence. The Hacker's keyboards absorb you into the First Album's dark yet danceable electro universe. I've heard Miss Kittin and Golden Boy and Miss Kittin and Felix da Housecat but neither of those two combinations can compare with Miss Kittin and the Hacker; talk about a match made in heaven. Miss Kittin and the Hacker don't simply compliment each other they were made for each other. Miss Kittin's ice-cold electric vocals mated with the caustic keyboards of the Hacker implode into electronic liquid nitrogen that will blast your mind straight into orbit.

First I want to tell you to not let the name Miss Kittin fool you. The name "Miss Kittin" immediately brings to mind an image of sultry, cooing, seductive sex kittens of the Ann Margaret type. Well, Miss Kittin is no sultry, seductive, playful, romping little sex kitten, oh no, she rips through ole blue eyes in the track "Frank Sinatra" like a ferocious mountain lion. Throughout the "First Album" Miss Kittin is vicious, blunt, detached, wicked, and ambivalent and not to be trifled with, nowhere on the First Album is she a cute cuddly sex kitten.

The Hacker was obviously influenced by a variety of Euro Boys such as Erasure, Kraftwerk, the Human League and by American dance maestro Bobby "O". Over the years in the rock n' roll world many young men have been heralded as the "guitar hero". To my recollection no one individual has even been heralded as a synth/keyboard hero. I nominate the Hacker for this honor. His keyboards are caustic, breezy, vicious, frenetic and dangerous arcs of electricity that melt the mind.

"Stock Exchange" has a busy electronic beehive buzz that sounds like the inner workings of the busy NYSE. "L Homme Dans L'Ombre" is simply aggressive and menacing electricity let loose upon the world. As waves of electricity free itself from the restrictive confines of the CD player, it fills your house like that giant electronic monster from the film "Forbidden Planet". While trapped in this intoxicating electronic storm Miss Kittin states "I'm afraid", she should be and so should you, it's fierce.

Kittin's vocal ohms and the Hacker's minimalist electric monotones in "Life on MTV" makes the real world of MTV sound like a surreal and frightening Twilight Zone type place.

The Hacker tips his hat to Bobby "O" in the hilarious "Nurse" in which Miss Kittin sings in a more monotonous drone than Book of Love's Susan Octavianno. Alas, being a disco singing nurse is not the dream she had for herself as a little girl. She sings that she could have been a porn star in LA, but no, she's a nurse singing disco and the best part is she doesn't sound at all happy about it.... it's a wonderful treat.

Like Ganymede's "Euromantique" or Ladytron's "Light and Magic" Miss Kittin and the Hacker's "First Album" does not contain any duds. Each track is an exciting electrical experience and the CD is pure listening pleasure from the first through the final track.

If an electrical injection of euphoria is what you need, you absolutely must pick-up Miss Kittin and the Hacker's "First Album"

And please, don't burn it, buy it.

Rix Roundtree-Harrison

I only gave 3 stars because she has better stuff. I'm a DJ. Trance, house, break beats. Love GOA. Love Infected Mushroom. Love Miss Kittin. This album is okay for her first outing (and the style is unique in that her newer stuff isn't as out-of-the-basement sounding). I agree that the differential among all the songs isn't that wide. But if you like it at all, GET SOME NEW KITTIN. She's badass!!! I Com and Or are both great, but her mixing / spinning is the best. Mixing Me and On The Road are 2 of the best cds i've ever heard. (When she DJ's, not all the tracks are by her, but she knows how to use them) Get them!

The people who dismiss this as an extremely delusioned and talentless woman-in-a-nurse-outfit's rants...are well...delusioned themselves!
This is one of the most stellar albums in recent history, provoking all the emotions listed all in some sort of triple-negative level of coolness.
If you have no idea what that means, you don't have to.
This album finds Miss Kittin (the French Caroline Herve), dishing her deadpan, wicked commentary on society and her life, and turning its mundanity into a statement. With sparse and expertly handled synthesizers this album utilizes synthesizers in their most minimalistic into power in the 21st century music scene.
It seems that radio is not brave enough for this music, so why wait any longer?
It's intriguingly multi-facted just as Andy Warhol's pop-art seemed bizarre or misplaced at first, but grew to make people thnk, and thereby become indispensible.
As it says on the cd's front sticker, this cd even reaches a bizarre sort of poignance at times, especially with her knowing of the cold, crass life way women are forced to live, and be handled as, in the scene of stripper-dom.
All in all, you have to have this. This is not someone pretentiously cashing in on the flourishing electro-clash scene.

I bought this album about a year ago, and loved it. But it's only over time that I have started to appreciate the more complex aspects of it. This is, without a doubt, the single best Electroclash album out there. The Hacker provides some brilliantly clinical music, against Miss Kitten's detached, alienated, nihilistic and carefully affected slighty-broken English vocals and lyrics.

Many probably bought this because the heard 'Frank Sinatra', and found it quite amusing. That's what I thought at first as well. But after listening to it a few times, you realise it is a pretty smart song, concerning the moral vacuity at the heart of modern celebrity. Miss Kitten is a very astute social commentator, with tongue in cheek at times. Miss Kitten creates an image in our heads - going out with her carefree 'famous friends', eating caviar, drinking champagne, having sex in limos and VIP areas. They then discuss Frank Sinatra, and find the idea of him being dead amusing. A less sophisticated artist would simply write 'modern celebrity is vain, shallow, and vacuous'.

The Hacker is quite clearly a very talented producer and musician, though in terms of producing 'tunes', he only gets a couple of opportunities on this album to really pull out all the stops. Most of the rest are quite minimalist and clinical in the electroclash style - which compliments Miss Kitten's vocals. Whilst this makes most of the songs less danceable, this album is not supposed to be an retro 1980's electronic musical excercise. The best tune on the album is 'Stock Exchange' - a beautifully built, multi-layered tune that could fill any dance floor.

Ladytron are more radio friendly are arguably write better tunes, but this is a far smarter piece of work. More of the same, please.