Seattle Subsonic

The Icarus Kid Is Here To Slay

November 12th, 2010

For the generation of males lucky enough to be born in time to enjoy the Golden Age of video games (roughly ’76- ’85), Nintendo’s flagship console—the NES—is perhaps the most revered. Sure, there are Atari uber-enthusiasts, Sega megalomaniacs, and, heck, even ColecoVision has it’s corny collective. But it’s the NES that best evokes vivid basement memories of mythically bizarre heroes methodically working their way through “worlds”, powering up along the way with plants, potions, and a panoply of weaponry, all in an effort to save a damsel or defeat an overlord. The games were fantastical Choose Your Own Adventures of incredible 8-Bit proportions that were every bit as addicting as the Four Loko these brainless kids are ingesting nowadays. The music, of course, was much more than a toothless soundtrack, it was a score. A score you remember to this day as if it was a lullaby, a careful composition of dazzling digital sounds from Japanese composers that highlighted and enhanced the on-screen shenanigans. I mean, hearing it now, that shit takes you back.

.

Reverence often fails to avoid pastiche, however, and the last thing we need is to hear the music of the Mushroom Kingdom’s underworld appropriated by creative-less jerks. It would seem no one understands this better than local (via Kentucky) producer Dan Crowdus, aka The Icarus Kid. The man has turned his (and our) childhood memories into an astonishing homage to the cartridge giants: the Mario Bros., Link from Zelda, Samus Aran of Metroid, and many more. Amazingly, no samples from his adopted namesake, Kid Icarus, made the cut. Outside of Mario and the nameless astronaut from Section Z, Pit was my hero of choice. I played so much Kid Icarus that I had all the codes memorized, the sections inscrutably mapped, bargaining power with the black market and a healthy number of victories against the dreaded Medusa. Oddly enough, I almost never play video games any more. It just doesn’t interest me the way it used to, aside from the occasional ass-whuppin’ I lay on my buddies in Mario Kart 64 (braggart!).

.

So, naturally, I was all ready to hate on this self-titled record from The Icarus Kid. But Crowdus’ incorporation of NES sounds and music into his own high-flyin’, beat-thumpin’ techno mixes resists, for the most part, any hackneyed interpretation of these revered aural memories. At times, it actually kinda slays. “Benny & Clyde”, for instance, is an icy cool break-beat rampage where break dancers would need 6 legs and 6 arms just to keep up. Crowdus uses the artificially spooky music from The Legend of Zelda in the high-climax nu-goth sleepwalker “Dodongo”. His touch is delicate, often letting the samples provide the intensity, such as in “Hammer” which uses a Wrecking Crew sample to perfection. Other times, he surrounds a few simple sounds with his own tripped out cyborg symphony (“Muramasa”). His most motley—and thus best—track is the Mario Bros.-infused “Albatross”, which feels like 8 harrowing levels of multiplex computer fantasia all in itself.

.

Is every track an invincible Starman or gold coin? No. And if you can’t stand the hypnotism and spoon-fed velocity of strobe-lit innominate club hits, this probably won’t tickle your joystick. But if your appetite is for slickly integrated Nintendo-born techno-tronic, slap on that Power Glove and hit start. Actually, Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-A-B-Select, then Start.

.

Albatross [super mario bros. & defender II]

Dodongo [legend of zelda]
.
RootMusic BandPage by The Icarus Kid