Class is in session: if your world is one where Supreme Commander is a shoot-em-up video game, 'electronic music' is something perpetrated by sleazy guys in tracksuits and bling, and the only noteworthy sound ever to have emerged from New Zealand is the neutered yuppie-pop of Crowded House, Auckland's wildly inventive Kraus is sitting you down for some hardcore re-education.
The latest and strangest import from Oceania's exploding scene, Supreme Commander is a mind-fucking 36-minute filmstrip of Kraus' animatronic alternate-reality, where the deep-fuzzed guitars and modular electronics have minds and souls and personalities of their own, gurgling and stuttering, screaming and warbling and melting and hissing with total unpredictability. Like the underwater exotica of Raymond Scott, or the squishy 'visual sounds' of electronic—music pioneer Norman Mclaren, Kraus' singular vision refuses to moor to any particular time or place, dripping scuzz as it lurches lysergically from alien cockpit to opium den. Some seriously skewed and utterly unclassifiable shit from the onetime drummer of N.Z. space-punks the Futurians, this is the surprise jam of late 2012.
Selling points
- Kraus' music has been featured in The Wire, Foxy Digitalis, and Tiny Mix Tapes and also has a song on the Xbox game "Zombusters".
- Kraus played drums in The Murdering Monsters and The Aesthetics, co-founded and named The Futurians in 2001, and played on their first album "!Blastov!". Kraus is currently in Pouffe with Matthew Plunkett, The Maltese Falcons with Duckling Monster of The Futurians, and Olympus with Stefan Neville.
- This is Kraus' second full length, a reissue of the cassette release on Dungeon Taxis from 2011. Kraus' first LP release Faster Than The Speed Of Time was issued on Dilettante Courtoisie/Bimbo Tower Records and is now out of print.
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