HK119 - 'Fast Cheap And Out Of Control' (One Little Indian) Released 29/09/08

Described by Bjork as “the perfect blond woman”, visual arts graduate Heidi Kilpelainen, goes by the product code HK119. A woman who cites Bowie and Kraftwerk among her many influences, the press release describes her second album as using the “common language of pop” to draw attention to 21st Century societal alienation and contradiction. Being a woman who views convention as a narrow minded unnecessary, the obvious comparisons are obvious; Roisin Murphy, Goldfrapp, Bjork and a touch of Debbie Harry but the reality is that HK119 is uncompromisingly out there and ‘Fast Cheap & Out Of Control’ isn’t for the mildly curious or faint hearted.

Using contemporary themes such as celebrity culture, space travel and mind control HK119 employs her hard-nosed pronounced Finnish parlance to mix the eccentrically uniformed electo pop dalliances of ‘C’est La Vie’ and ‘Clone’ alongside the laidback jaunt of ‘Super Bug’ and casual after dark Warhol jazz shuffle of ‘Celeb’. HK119’s sycophants will champion the cut-price twisted electronica of ‘Cryonics’, ‘Tropikalia’ and the sinister shards and dark pulses of ‘Avaruusasema’ (Finnish for Space Station) as a glimpse of the future, while cynics risk rebuke for disregarding them as nothing more than conceptual visual art nonsense, in much the same way as shitting in a cup and putting it in the Tate doesn’t guarantee art status. However if you can bear the ironic insult of not understanding post-modern irony, you might just enjoy the psychosomatic vocal calm of ‘Liberty’ and the wide-eyed crystalline cautionary vastness of ‘Space PT 1’ and ‘Space PT 2’.

Pop is a description that shamelessly hounds HK119, but can only be applied to three of the sixteen tracks; the album opener ‘Mind’, ‘What Am I’ and ‘Divine’ which exudes an abundance of style and poise while embracing Huxley’s notion of production line birth, adds further enjoyment to the defined structure, pace and experimental energy.

With little to separate her music from her conceptual art many consider Kilpelainen to be the idealistic total artist, but despite snatches of artistic intelligence ‘Fast, Cheap & Out Of Control’ may be a little too clever for its own good and her position as a futuristic forerunner is as temporary as the borrowed substance of ‘Night’ and its closing lyrics “life is dark and I am alone”.