Sinister Kitchen

Sinister Kitchen

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 1, 2000)
• Original Release Date: January 1, 2000
• Number of Discs: 1
• ASIN: B00004TVRU
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #921,588 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Track Listings

1. Another Successful Mastodon Hunt

2. Je Suis

3. The Battle of Seattle

4. Space Colony 42-X11 Shopping Mall Furbie Assault

5. My Tortuous Taiwanese Twip

6. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Play Pinball Every Lunchbreak

7. Sink? Or Swim?

8. Field Programmable Gate Array, Vol. 2

9. Float Dub

10. Attack of the Cybershoppers

11. The Last Train to Kosovo

12. "Papa!"

13. Tales from the Lonely Cloud

14. You Give Me a Pounding F#%$ing Headache

Editorial Reviews

About the Artist

Sinister Kitchen is Jonathan Kochmer and Mell Dettmer, working with invited artists from King Crimson, Critters Buggin', Living Daylights, and, in the future, other bands as well.

While pursuing musical compositions, Jonathan Kochmer worked as a DNA programmer for the Human Genome Mapping Library Project, Internet researcher for the NSF, evolutionary biologist at Yale, and one of the first employees at Amazon.com. Jonathan has truly seen and experienced first-hand the tug-of-war between the poetic and the technocratic.

Having engineered or produced for Critters Buggin', Bumpa, the Amon Tobin Ponga Remix, Maktub, Amy Denio, Two Loons For Tea, Unisphere, projects for John Zorn's label Tzadik, and many others, Mell Dettmer is an industry heavyweight in the Pacific Northwest. Talented and mutli-faceted, her work as a notable sound enginner plays heavily into the precision and detail with which Sinister Kitchen is crafted. Between working on her many side projects and running Endless Recods, a piece of her artistry and mastery of the cutting edge of modern music has been embedded into this album.

Band members: Jonathan Kochmer: Guitars & Effects.
Mell Dettmer: Effects.
Paul Black: Drums.
Mike Dillon: Percussion.
Dale Fanning: Drums.
Trey Gunn: Warr Guitar.
Brad Houser: Bass.
Eyvind Kang: Vioin, Viola & Erhu.
Jessice Stevens Lurie: Saxophone.
Pat Mastelotto: Drums & Percussion.
Skerik: Saxophone.

Product Description

Sinister Kitchen's first CD, a collective project choreographed by Jonathan Kochmer and Mell Dettmer, and featuring members of King Crimson, Critters Buggin', & Living Daylights, is a dark post-ambient excursion into the power of raw sound. Piercing siren calls for revolution at the Seattle WTO protests collapse into a chorus of Furbies at FAO Schwartz; faux-organic poetry from a synthetic speech program morphs into the sounds of lost children in the Budapest train station; and a seemingly innocent stroll through the temples of Taiwan is followed by the writhings of ping-ponging fax machines. The first Sinister Kitchen CD is a soundtrack for delicious nightmares, addictively scary and soothing at the same time.

Already creating a buzz at college radio stations like KCMU in Seattle, and garnering positive attention from the highly selective online music community, Sinister Kitchen is poised to become the next Aphex Twin, Third Eye Foundation, or Merzbow.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars sinister kitchen, June 28, 2000

By	evan blackstone (Seattle) - See all my reviews

Parts of this album are eerily reminiscent of Robert Fripp's "Evening Star" (on the essential Fripp and Eno) Somewhere, Sometime, not quite sure, but I have been there, or perhaps not. It doesn't matter. In all, this feels like a soundtrack that runs through my head, day and night, going everywhere, and then going....nowhere...it doesn't matter. I suggest you find out for yourself........

5.0 out of 5 stars Electron infusion, October 23, 2003

By	liberty janus (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

For a few unusual neuronal complexes the experience of this music will prove to be powerfully invigorating and affirming. For these people this music needn't be categorized as experimental, or probing, or exploratory, or progressive, or whatever. It's just a spectacular conflation of sounds and a veritable banquet of emotionally inspiring sonic manipulation. Still.... thanks to the enormous subjectivity of musical impact, a recording this out of the mainstream won't be showing up on commercial radio or appeal to the vast majority of listeners, who, thanks to the bounty of nature (and for reasons nobody has been able to sufficiently explain) have their wheels spun, probably just as vigorously, by less complex inputs. But that minority, though, who groove on uniqueness, difference, complexity, invention, and a certain oblique approach to sound, will absorb the individuality and the liberty implied by this music like they breathe air and just as necessarily.

Ambience, polyphony, atonality, and organized noise all find their proper and impactful places in this mix. Even though there are many extended passages of darkly reflective ambience, distant sonic rumblings and unusual sounds continually flow in and out, or leap aggressively into the foreground. All manner of fascinating musical musings occur as a result. There are astonishing textures, both soft and harsh, and wonderful contrasts and combinations of feelings. Passages of dark, somber reflection are simultaneously uplifting and calming, and even the harsh juxtapositions of noise and sound on "The Battle of Seattle" aren't merely abrasive, narrow symbols of an ongoing social struggle but seem to capture a fleeting resolution of feelings in a way that all good art mysteriously manages.

Naturally it's difficult to categorize this stuff. It's more or less a species of electronic music that happens to be semi-ambient, avant-garde, and rocking too. The cover of the cd says, "All Sinister Kitchen compositions on this disk were created via extensive digital and analog manipulation of songs originally recorded by the band Two Loons For Tea" (whose excellent work is also worth acquiring!). It well illustrates a fact so glaring in the techno-digital era: that open heads don't care how their musical banquets get made. Musical expression is just organized sound: diverse, polyglot, effusive, infusing and endlessly absorbing. As the cover also says, "No electrons are ever harmed in the process"! Keep your synapses open and let these electrons animate your tissue in new and rewarding ways.