Kill For TOTAL PEACE

The art worlds are never in sync with each other. They go through their own self absorbed loops. What’s popular in one medium is very rarely popular in another at that moment in time. However there was a moment not so long ago that a fusion occurred. Watching White Denim the other week were two trendy girls both sporting Matthew Williamson dresses from H&M (feel free to click, for every reader referral I get a reach around from their PR officer). Seeing their psychedelic colours with a hint of contrived trailer trash their look perfectly defining the band. Eleven months ago I wrote of the band, “the audience […] wishes to break out dancing, arms flailing wildly whilst maintain the icy coolness of the bourgeoisie embracing Outsider Art,” but in Leeds the other week, there was no ‘icy coolness’ in the audience, just two girls losing their shit to what is now, a great band. In my mind what’s happened is that the two circles, art and fashion, have both moved toward the same point at the same time. Both White Denim and Williamson have turned their back from the high-end avant guard and embraced the popular to great success.

As this overcooked observation settles I thought that I’d use the opportunity to force feed you a slice of psychedelia in the belief that you have a revitalised penchant for it (and how about an H&M dress?).

I first got onto this band, Kill For TOTAL PEACE after Etienne Jaumet recommended them to me. Although he plays sax with them occasionally I have no reason to believe that the recommendation was anything other than sincere. What separates them from their peers is the oscillations that enter and exit the tracks allowing the fuzz and distortion to pause and settle – if only just for a moment. Without it, these essentially stoner riffs would be dull and cliche’d but with these on target references to Goblin, the listener is dragged into a zombie horror hallucination, which with the right headphones, can be suffocating. Kill For TOTAL PEACE are still very much fixed in the avant guard realm however unlike White Denim, they carry it well. I don’t expect that in a year’s time the fashion industry will be draping their sound over mannequins, but something inside me says that it should happen.