at a glance...

Hometown: Grenoble, France
First Recordings: 1998

Personnel:
Miss Kittin: vocals, prodction
Tobias Neumann: production
Thies Mynther: production
LA Williams: vocals

Bands in the family :
The Hacker, Goldenboy, DJ Hell, LA Williams, T. Raumschmiere, Felix Da Housecatt

Notes:
Caroline Herve comes from France and found her techno feet in Geneva, but you’d be forgiven for thinking she was the world’s only Francophone Berliner. While she had already established a DJ career, her ascendancy as a “figure” – one of the best the faceless techno scene has ever produced – came tied to the rise of electroclash. Her deadpan vocals and semi-sarcastic sauciness livened up the best records of that movement’s early days, most notably Felix Da Housecat’s “Silver Screen (Shower Scene)” and her own work with The Hacker (on their First Album) and Goldenboy. Apparently feeling hemmed in by irony, she released a couple of humorless techno mixes before returning with the refreshing I Com in 2003.

Is there anyone in music more painfully self-aware than Caroline Herve? Combining all the worst excesses of the self-obsessed diva with the pretensions of the reclusive techno boffin, she's spent the last four years acting the sharp-clawed electroclash bitchqueen on record, earning her supper spinning the kind of minimalist house and techno that makes Richie Hawtin's pate sweat, and fervently denying any interest in the genre/trend/movement that has been modeled on her voice and in her image. It's the kind of behavior that suggests a long vacation and some therapy sessions are in order, but it's also made her potentially the most interesting figure in electronic music since The Aphex Twin put his tank up on blocks.

And now, with the electroclash bandwagon careening off the tracks, she's delivering a cred-renewing full-length "artist album." So what'll it be? Low profile? Hardly. I Com comes out with back arched and claws bared, as defensive, unfocused, self-obsessed and ultimately as charismatic as its creator. Even before the music arrives, the record takes a swipe at haters real and imagined: A scrawled inscription on the CD surface reads "I heard someone saying there should not be any 'Miss Kittin' section in record stores, butt [sic] a 'Featuring Miss Kittin' one." The implication being: Take this, motherfuckers.

And in large part the music within - produced and written by Herve with Tobias Neumann and Thies Mynther -- backs up the talk. Not without more talk, of course. Opener "Professional Distortion" is an hilariously bitchy journal of a DJ diva, wherein Kittin complains "I have to wake up every day … I have to play records all night … I'm in the loop, I am the loop… I have to kiss so many cheeks … I have to put guests on the list." Set to bleeps, guitars, and fractured rhythms, it's a great sounding opener: brash, funny, less cheeky than ballsy, and the perfect vehicle for the Kittin voice, which seems determined to redefine the word deadpan. Is she really complaining? Is it all a joke? Does she really love herself this much? The answer to these questions - and almost every other question this album raises - is yes.

I Com is all over the place, and seems purpose-built to back up Kittin's claim that she was never really much into electro. It's mostly synthetic, in places very ambient, and really better suited to a headphone session than a preening spin around the dancefloor. The full-bore Kittin attitude is best showcased on in-your face numbers like "Requiem for a Hit," a techno-junglist collaboration with L.A.Williams that quickly spins off into a kind of nonsensical sado-masochist chant. "Meet Sue Be She" is a delightful if lightweight piece of party punk - and possibly the only song on the album not directly about Herve (it's about her manager). "I Come.com" and "Dub About Me" are fairly self-explanatory, and "Clone Me" takes the onanism right over the top. It's all quite absurd, but genuinely entertaining. High art? Maybe not. But then that's probably a good thing.

"Happy Violentine," however, is something else again. Another confessional, this one's more oblique, and musically outshines everything else on I Com. If you thought you never needed to hear a Miss Kittin ballad … well, you were wrong. Check it out.

I Com is undoubtedly a difficult first album, but is it a success? Well let's see. In just under an hour, Kittin drops the electro, keeps the clash, thoroughly celebrates and ridicules herself, leaves her fans satisfied and her detractors (if there really were any) even more confused. I'd say that's a result.