AMG Review of Team Kitty-Yo

Ned Raggett
All Music Guide

Acting as an anniversary celebration for the Kitty-Yo label based out of Germany, Team Kitty-Yo is a varied but generally enjoyable collection of tracks -- previously released, new, and rare -- from many of its artists. In keeping with the label's general bent over time, while various approaches are showcased on Team Kitty-Yo, techno and electronic music take up the lion's share, starting with "Wir Sind Nicht Romantiques," a sly new track from Sex in Dallas featuring a new female singer. If Kitty-Yo isn't coming up with surprises or a cutting edge per se, it does provide an enjoyable listen with its many artists, where the attraction lies in the small details on many songs rather than a massive surprise. So on the first disc, consisting mostly of new or previously unavailable songs, there's the melancholic string arrangement on Richard Davis' "Unrealistic or the Truth," any number of tracks that aim at a certain elegant sleaziness (as with Raz Ohara's "Hymn"), the restrained but still potent vocal sass of Rhythm King & Her Friends' "Fifteen," and -- perhaps most famously -- Gold Chains & Sue Cie's energetic, catchy "Crowd Control." Those songs that take a non-techno/dance path generally tend to the attractively downbeat, sometimes beautifully so, as with the late-night jazz/lounge grooves on Spyritual's "Offtune Soulseeds" and Kante's "Baron Samedi," or Maximilian Hecker's post-Radiohead/Coldplay piano-led "Help Me." The second disc cherry-picks from the label's back catalog, turning up a few relative obscurities such as Raz Ohara's cover of the Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?" and Rechenzentrum's "Planet Janet" -- not a cover of a #Rocky Horror Picture Show song. One unreleased track also takes a bow from the redoubtable Tarwater -- "Doppelganger" is a bit of semi-Morricone twang mixed with low-key singing, not deathless but not unpleasant.