Miss Kittin
I Com

THE REVIEW

When my mother starts criticizing (increasingly rarely now, poor woman) my multiple work activities related to music—which bring me so much joy but, in fact, very little funds to survive—she always says: "Couldn't you have been a DJ at raves, at least you’d make some good money?". Every time she puts me in a crisis, yes, because I tell myself she’s right and that if I could go back to my eighteen years, I would seriously consider it.

It is with great envy, therefore, that I follow the evolution of this small, great woman, the tenacious Miss Kittin, renowned French DJ who forcefully entered the Olympus of world djing. Caroline Hervé, alias Miss Kittin, is the 31-year-old queen of the nights at the best raves and clubs in Europe. A former art student, in the mid-'90s she began performing as a full-time DJ, and the meeting with Michel Amato, alias The Hacker, did the rest, bringing her to great international success and excellent collaborations with top people like Felix Da Housecat, Detroit Grand Pubhas, Sven Vath, and Golden Boy. Thus, we are facing a major entity in international club culture. Among the progenitors of what has been defined as electroclash (the '80s revisited in a techno-d'n'b key), her unmistakable style has contaminated a plethora of emerging emulators worldwide, yet she, a seductive witch in soft-fetish sauce, remains the absolute Queen.

But Miss Kittin is not just a fantastic assembler of rhythms and sound; she also has a very pronounced musical conscience and has decided to give us a record that proves it. Freshly printed in stores is ICom, her first solo album where she leaves the DJ decks for an hour to don the guise of a subversive and rocking electro-punk. The Miss justifies this drift: "I grew up in a family that listened to everything, from Supertramp to Miles Davis, from Genesis to Vivaldi, from Pink Floyd to Maria Callas. For two years, my parents even tried to make me study the piano. But I preferred dance. My adolescence was crossed by electronic music and new wave. In ten years, I have absorbed all the sounds around me. And this is the result." This is the reason for my envy! I also had parents like this; I also preferred dance to the piano; I also absorbed all the sounds around me. The difference is that she was cleverer than me, darn it!

Full of verve and emotion, class and savoir vivre, ICom is supported by her unmistakable voice, slightly affected, and her unique personality. In fact, it starts with the track, as well as the first single, that already says it all with the title, Professional Distortion. In this track Miss Kittin, amidst electronically modified guitars and captivating d'n'b, declares: "I have to sing, I have to tease, I have to kiss so many cheeks, I got the fave, I got the tricks, I have to put guest on the list…".

Everyone is invited to the party then, to the rhythm of these trippy songs, brimming with the best electro and refined rock-pop perspectives. Ballerina and feline in Meet Sue Be She, whispered and seductive in I Come.com, emotional and soft in Happy Violentine, cleverly retro in the new wave of Kiss Factory and Sountrack For Now, crystalline and lyrical on Dub About Me, elegantly persuasive in Clone Me, ambiguously panther-like and sensual in 3eme Sexe… Miss Kittin will know how to fascinate you relentlessly: a splendid "bad girl," all to be discovered... in a figurative sense, of course!