K-Rad
By Joshua Westlund
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Unlike their forefathers, however, K-Rad have shown a surprising willingness to meet the club kids halfway. They compose entirely new music for every live performance, and tailor these compositions to the venue itself–a method that’s earned them gigs at progressively larger venues (in six months they’ve gone from playing experimental rooms like Nervous Center to trendy hot spots like the Dragon Room). Aware that electronic music performances are better heard than seen, they set up their gear on the dance floor itself. This not only affords near invisibility but also allows them to hear the sound system as the audience does.
K-Rad opened their Karma set with a foulmouthed sample that sounded suspiciously like Elmer Fudd, then quickly built up a playful house groove. Chicago has been and probably always will be dominated by house, and K-Rad’s set (unlike the vast majority of their recorded output) stuck to the metronomically precise four-on-the-floor house paradigm, allowing them to create music simultaneously in the pocket and deviously off kilter. Leaving the basic beat pattern to repeat ad infinitum (and thereby keeping the place jumping) K-Rad were free to go apeshit with the details: jackhammer snares, thick dollops of noise, melodies that swerved like a drunk driver in a snowstorm.
Divining who does what in K-Rad is tough. Every track, even those on K-Rad’s ten self-released albums (available on CD for $5 each through the group’s Web site, www.padk-rad.com), is treated as a work in progress, which means that it can be edited by anyone at any time. In a sense, K-Rad collaborate by screwing up one anothers’ songs.
