Style Of Eye - The Big Kazoo EP

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  • Since his not-so-humble beginnings debuting on the famed Classic imprint, Style of Eye's style has evolved from jackin' funky house to US West-Coast tech to electro house. And while he's always found himself producing for reputable labels (the aforementioned Classic, Nightshift, Doubledown, and more recently John Dahlback's Pickadoll) it does seem like every Style of Eye release is so label-centric that he really doesn't have an identifiable sound to attribute to himself. It's happened again on his Dirtybird debut, with 'The Big Kazoo' sounding like it could've been lifted from Claude VonStroke's PC. 'The Big Kazoo' is indeed that. It's basically a big kazoo solo. A very simple record, it slices and dices a single kazoo note for six-and-a-half minutes over the top of rolling percussion and cheeky comic book samples. The only reprieve comes after the—you guessed it—kazoo air raid siren in the breakdown, when a slurring orchestral wood and brass section kicks in to great effect. Now if only that kept going instead of diving back into the main section… 'Hide' on the flip is a much better representation of what Style of Eye is capable of. Here he gets the percussion a little crisper, and uses a 'H-Bomb'-esque pulsing bassline to jog playfully alongside a wealth of sci-fi beams and cavernous waterdrops. This is a nice warm-up set teaser. People are definitely going to draw parallels between 'The Big Kazoo' and Samim's ‘Heater’, and they’ll be not entirely unwarranted either. It has that same kitschy novelty value, but there’s just not as much fun here, so it's hard to say how this release will go in the end. But regardless, 'Hide' is the better of the two anyway.
  • Tracklist
      A The Big Kazoo B Hide
RA