It's been quite a while, but crawling out from the sordid and filthy breeding ground of Brisbane's seedy underground, Kitchen's Floor are back with an incredible new LP, entitled Battle of Brisbane and while their output hasn't been as steady as previous years, this new conglomeration of Kitchen's Floor is shockingly solid and coherent compared to their earlier releases, a frighteningly focused massive step forward. After the untimely death of his good friend, Meat Thump collaborator and publisher of Negative Guest List, Brendon Annesley, main Kitchen's Floor progenitor Matt Kennedy took a hiatus from performing and recording, understandably. The Kitchen's Floor chapter of the Noise in My Head book clearly illustrates this fragile time in his life, and we're very excited that Kennedy has decided to channel his efforts into a new LP, one of which should easily knock Kitchen's Floor into an even higher echelon of the vast and varied Australian underground.
What clearly sticks out on Battle of Brisbane at first listen, is the massive upgrade in production quality, yet it doesn't even come close to making the music suffer. It's really just what Kitchen's Floor needed, and it effectively streamlines the sound into a vessel teeming with heaps of blackness as per usual, yet it's just done well enough to slip past those "lo-fi" hash-taggers this time, and the effects are truly monumental. Kennedy channels those perfectly-patented hollow hooks into submission, nicking a riff from The Fall here, and a vocal melody from a buried Syd Barrett deep cut there, all with utterly dazzling results. Could this be the real Kitchen's Floor that's finally crawled out from under it's static-caked covers? It's surely an exciting prospect, and the tracks laid bare across Battle of Brisbane are nothing short of captivating, a modern post punk masterpiece from one of the planet's most fertile breeding grounds for top-notch new music. You will not be disappointed.
Order a copy of the new LP from HoZac Records right HERE or wherever fine records are sold
