Music Review - Techno Blue by The Killer Bee Relay Team
Hey! So here we go with a Baywolfmusic whiskey fueled music review. The other day on my twitter feed I saw The Killer Bee Relay Team looking for some earholes to check out his new EP before it gets released at the end of June. I checked his Bandcamp page and saw the album Techno Blue on pre-order status.
2 things got me excited after reading the album description. One, the Bastl Thyme made some trippy wide noises the other night when I was watching TheKBRT do one of his insane Twitch streams. So, I was looking forward to hearing more noises from that killer robot, sequencer, delay whatever the fuck it is… it sounds cool. Two, I immediately saw the 5 performance variation description and thought “Oh shit, TheKBRT is doing a Run Lola Run thing where the soundtrack varies a bunch but uses the same core themes and voices!” I tried to do that once and it was one of my favorite projects, but this isn’t about me or some cool ass movie soundtrack from 1998 so back to Techno Blue!
I queued up the 5 tracks from the EP and saw the track times:
Techno Blue 5 (050521) 06:08
Techno Blue I (032321) 09:56
Techno Blue 6.1 (051221) 13:46
Techno Blue 4 (042821) 07:48
Techno Blue 6.2 (051221) 09:46
Oh boy a solid 45 minutes of the same-ish track! Let’s get at it.
Techno Blue 5 (track 1)
Let’s just say OOF! The track get’s filthy pretty fast then starts dosing you with a melody to keep your brain from melting. Drum structure and some creaky white noise start to add structure… before you know it you are off to the races with a nice groove and bobbin’ your headphones all over the place. The last 90 seconds start to get out of hand. I think TheKBRT decided to go off. I picture a Trent Reznor style bashing of piano keys all over the stage, but this time TheKBRT is wrenching the knobs of his synths and controllers to 11 before ripping them off and eating them for the camera shock value. The track ends and I’m like oh shit, there is four more of those. Let’s go!
Techno Blue I (track 2)
Right off the bat there’s a feeling of inverted melody going from track 1 to 2, familiar yet different… zags when you thought it would zig. (damn you lobelia erinus!) But the first thing that hit me was the creaky white noise was back. But this time It hit me with a visual… I felt like I was on a creaky old pirate ship stressing and bending from some terrible unstoppable ocean force, the ship is probably on some tripped-out pirate rave on the high seas. TheKBRT starts to mess with the beats and I notice a shift in the cadence of the track right about the same time I notice I’m 5 minutes in but it feels like I just pushed play a minute ago. The track takes command of the last 4 minutes and doesn’t let go until the final notes pan off into calm again.
Techno Blue 6.1 (track 3)
This track gets going outright with a punchy beat and the pirate rave is back… good! Not going to lie I looked up as my studio headphones started pulsing my brain like that first button on the blender that says… pulse and noticed I’m in for 13 minutes of this mayhem.
Filters and flanges save the day making the middle stretch of this track another audio adventure plus there is a cool ominous bass melody that keeps showing up… I hope it comes back a bunch of times. Somewhere in the middle of this track a cacophony of industrial sounding steam hiss type sounds hit you up. You know the type of ill-placed steam pipe that probably got you killed a bunch of times making you rage quit Megaman back in the day.
The familiar Techno Blue melodies come back but this time with more industrial sounding slices and dices. This is what I’m going to call the nightmare sequence track in the group… because when I listen, I feel like I’m running away from something. It was a damn good audio journey but when it was over, I swear I had to catch my breath.
Techno Blue 4 (track 4)
So much for not being a nightmare track… I can hear the devil telling me to do bad things to my cat in the first 15 seconds of track 4. The mix sways back to a bit of normalcy after the creepy voice and it sounds like TheKBRT is cooking up variations of the main theme like a mad scientist in a lab. I literally pictured Bunsen burners and beakers of boiling water going at one point. The outro gets crazy with some glitchy madness, and the devil voice popped back in to say ‘thanks for listening’ I think, but I haven’t seen my cat for like 2 days so…
Techno Blue 6.2 (track 5)
The final track gives us a nice punchy house beat to kick things off. Then my favorite recurring drum sequence pops in at 2:36. Manipulation of the whole thing threatens to take over, but familiar themes prevail, and the mix rebuilds itself to what we’ve become accustom to hearing during the last 40 minutes of audio chaos with this EP. That groove is back that had my headphones bouncing on track 1 so kudos to TheKBRT for bringing the EP full circle.
So TheKBRT made good on his promise. Each track takes you on a journey with enough variation to feel like 5 different tracks. The melodies and sequences are catchy enough that I’ll be dropping some of these into my regular rotations and playlists. So, if you are down with some punchy modular synths taking you for a crazy pirate rave on the high seas, then check out Techno Blue. Just maybe put your cat away before you hit track 4.
Techno Blue releases on June 30th, 2021. You can pre-order it on The Killer Bee Relay Team’s Bandcamp page.
Cheers! I hope you enjoyed this Baywolfmusic whiskey fueled music review. Keep making music! I’ll keep listening!