Pitchfork

"What the goddamned hell?" may be your initial reaction to K-PIST. After a minute of a bubbly, bassy sound, a sequenced keyboard takes hold of your personal space and invades. While the introduction on this disc admittedly sounds a little like a synthed-up version of Van Halen's "Right Now," it doesn't take long before Voltage Controlled's first song, "Videogamer" punches a hole through your speakers.

These guys would be just another grunge/ rap hybrid in the vein of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rage Against The Machine if it weren't for the neat sounds. Neat sounds? Well... yeah. And they're pretty neat. See, K-PIST have a gimmick: they've got a high- powered, crazy lead vocalist, a drummer that knows how to cop with the real, and electronic noisemakers. So, get this. It's aggressive power-chord, grunged- out rock and roll with no guitars-- just pissed- off machinery.

K-PIST list their equipment on the album's cover, and though I'm no stranger to old synth gear, I've never heard of a lot of this stuff. You've got your Orban EQ, Nordrack, Roland Juno 106, Novation Bass Station and the legendary ARP Odyssey. If you think you're intrigued right now, wait until you hear it.

Sure these guys don't make the most intelligent music on the planet, but the key is that it sounds cool. There are also some great rock tracks here. The catchy "Helicopter," "Uncle Sam" and "Gypsyland" would make nice additions to the mix if you're DJing for mixed company of rock and electronic fans.

As an added plus, there's a second disc they've put together just so you can sample from it and look at their cool graphics (the design is top notch, by the way-- it looks like they used to design the packaging for Intellivision games). Not bad for a bunch of crazy electro-Swedes. Right?