ALBUM REVIEW: Jib Kidder - Teaspoon to the Ocean (Domino)

Written for Middle Boop Mag: http://www.middleboopmag.com/music/music-news/jib-kidder-teaspoon-ocean

Sean Schuster-Craig, currently going under the alias of Jib Kidder, is a loosely New York-based artist who uses a rather avant-garde cut and paste approach, sonically trying to execute the overwhelming burr and beep nature of the internet age in all of its discombobulating glory. 

Kidder initially built up a name for himself on the American underground through an amazing set of Bandcamp Releases and a minor DIY hit, 2012’s ‘My Baby’. Teaspoon to the Ocean is his first release on quietly prestigious UK underground label Domino.  

His vocals consistently reel off like a text processor and his sparse soundsscapes are a collage of his juxtaposing influences including Animal Collective, Atlanta Rap and AM radio. Kidder is geographically hard to place, his Bandcamp bio reads, “No genre, no hometown, hard 2 pin down since Y2K.” In line with this vision, his music is the same, hard to trace, hard to pin down.

Kidder’s sharp wit and sonically “pretty” style is bemusing and appealing throughout TTTO yet his vision, his backstory, and in many ways his forward thinking philosophy are not executed in the hard-hitting way that they should have been. The final product comes across rather absentmindedly, sounding accidental and misunderstood.

Yet, the scene has been set, the foundations have been laid for something more developed and acute to follow. Perhaps the very nature of his idea, his approach, is what we are hearing, much like a teaspoon to the ocean, an overwhelmed, poetically unfathomable result ensues.