Doon Kanda: Labyrinth review – welcome to the haunted fun fair

(Hyperdub)
The designer and musician makes his mark using synthetic-sounding instruments to produce his spooky electronics

Jesse Kanda has made a considerable mark on culture with his graphic design – his mythic, bulbous, gender-indeterminate beings are the perfect foil for Arca’s music, and he has made beautiful, influential collaborations with FKA twigs and Björk. He then moved into music, as Doon Kanda, with two EPs leading up to this debut album, featuring another melancholy demigod on the cover.

A major theme of the decade’s electronic music has been the embrace of sounds that were regarded by most people as aural trash, from the ringtone kitsch of James Ferraro’s Far Side Virtual to Oneohtrix Point Never, PC Music and the vaporwave scene. Kanda’s instrumentals also persuasively make the case, with cheap-sounding synthetic strings and pianos – the kind you might find on software bundled with an early 00s desktop computer – put to queasy, discombobulating use throughout. Dio and Mino both sound like taped entrance music for a ghost train becoming warped in the heat; Pieridae is a grime production swamped with spectral violins. Kanda’s aptitude for melody is mixed and sometimes abandons him altogether, making the likes of Enigma and Garnet rudderless, but when he locks into one, his work becomes really compelling. Polycephaly has an edge of wild camp to its haughty piano tune, and Nastasya is superb, a prowling, funky pop production that would weirdly suit Britney Spears’ jaded vocal fry. In fact, any star looking to do something genuinely strange should get him behind the consoles.