Kid Carpet @ Telfords Warehouse
KID CARPET AT TELFORDS WAREHOUSE, CHESTER 19TH MAY 2005
Kid Carpet played an hour long set of songs that traversed genres ranging from breakbeat and electronica to hip hop and ballads. What was unusual was that he performed all of it using nothing more than a range of kid’s toys including keyboards, synthesizers, small neon coloured guitars and something akin to a ‘Simon Says’ game along with vocals from a tamagoichi toy!
So is it music or comedy?
Kid Carpet the concept is obviously a humorous gimmick. For example the gig tees were emblazoned with a demonic looking teddy bear. But he soon showed the audience that image aside he was going to treat the instruments he was using and the music he was making with the utmost respect.
The set was a mixture of backing music and special audio effects overlaid with live keyboards and vocals. We saw him rock out with small coloured guitars, jumping and spinning on stage to weird electro poprock numbers such as ‘Nelson Street Space Invaders’. These were showcased with an escalation from the ‘’White’ and ‘Purple’ guitars to the awesome ‘Red Guitar’ with attached flashing squares. We saw him mournfully sing ballads such as ‘Blind Boy’ with lyrics of ‘I would rather be a blind boy than see you walk away from me’, which showed an attempt at a more mature side to his music.
My favourite pieces however were those songs which demonstrated that all those jolly little noises, melodies and vocals stored in toy keyboards could be looped and blended to produce some impressive breakbeat and techno. The crowd pleaser of the night was his cover of Van Halen’s ‘Jump’ which was interweaved with pings and beeps and strange noisebox style vocals.
Each song was interspersed with small pauses as KC set up the next instrument or sample to be used. But he used this time wisely to build a rapport with the crowd, double checking with them that it was indeed the Casio Keyboard at setting 56 that was required next. His response to an accusation in an internet chat room that he was a one trick pony was to sing it back to the crowd to the tune of the Chesney Hawkes song ‘I am the one and only’.
Is he a one trick pony?
I don’t think so as he aims to make real alternative music and doesn’t just settle for one style but rather aims to embrace as many as possible. A more valid question may be whether he can sustain the concept of Kid Carpet beyond one album. Certainly it is an original idea that few, if anyone, has taken as far as he has. I also get the impression that he sees the toys as valid musical instruments in their own right. However he has enough talent to leave some of the toys behind and develop an even bigger and better sound.
His single “Your Love” was released on the 25th April 2005 by Tired & Lonesome Records. There is also a debut album due out in later in the Summer.
Links:
http://www.kidcarpet.co.uk/
http://www.tiredandlonesome.com/
http://www.telfordswarehouse.com/