By: Jessica Grose
The opening bars of Kid Carpet’s debut LP, Ideas & Oh Dears, sound like a synthesized street corner hurdy-gurdy. This goes on for about twenty seconds until a matter-of-fact, sexy (in a snottily adolescent way) voice breaks into the cacophony: “No one gives a shit if you’re not special.” A minute of this simplistic repetition gives cause to wonder whether Kid Carpet is “special” himself, whether he’s the kind of kid you slap on the back and applaud for simply trying. But by the end of the second track, “Green and Pleasant Land,” with its animal noise sampling and very basic drum beat, it’s clear that Carpet’s special-ness is either put-on or drug induced. If it’s the latter, Kid, can you hook a sister up? The feelings elicited from his freewheeling and entertaining style of electro-rap should be mass-produced.
From the lazily scrawled biography on his website, it’s obvious that Kid Carpet is more about lo-fi fun than about deep musical sentiment. Carpet’s music, self-described as a mixture of “kiddy disco punk and shit-hop,” sounds like a drunk man went wild with a See n’ Say and recorded the results. The samples on Ideas include horsies neighing, hands clapping, babies gurgling, wind blowing, and bubbles bubbling. The lyrics range from silly to downright dirty (particularly in a song called “Your Love,” where Kid tells a paramour, “I got your love down the front of my shirt / I got your love / There’s a stain on your skirt”). But Kid Carpet is nothing if not self-aware: He knows his gimmick of childlike songs is just that, a gimmick. On the song “1 Trick Pony,” he tells us, “I am a 1 trick pony, but there’s nobody I’d rather be.”
Since his humor is a combination of dry and completely daffy, it’s no wonder Kid Carpet hails from England (Bristol, to be precise): Some of the lyrics on his album are goofy enough to be Monty Python worthy. He’s been quite a local sensation in his native land. “In him was the dynamism, the unquestionable talent and the sheer enjoyment of both music and performance that made for a fantastic live gig,” said a BBC review of a Kid Carpet live show last year in Bristol. Unless you’re driving on the left side of the road, don’t count on seeing Kid’s playmation theatrics any time soon. The only performances he has scheduled in the coming months are in his hometown and at the Isle of Wight Festival in September.
Link: Kid Carpet official site
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