[The] KHZ -- Emotronic, Propain Wreckords, 2000. [Last Sigh Magazine]

Track Listing

1. Begin
2. Open me
3. What you want
4. Bobby
5. Accelerator Pt. III
6. De-pressed
7. Traveling Over
8. Ballad of Mary Beth
9. Always On My Mind
10. Same As
11. Wrong Again
12. The Deeper I Go (additional hidden track 10:00 in)

    KHZ is a relatively new band, only having released their first studio cd "Cryogenic Sleep" back in 1997. They spent the next couple of years doing live shows and building a fan base around the New York underground music scene until they signed onto the Chaotica label. The next 2 1/2 years they spent furthering their skills and opening up new audiences to their unique musical stylings by opening for such well known artists as The Creatures, and Hooverphonic. Three years after releasing "Cryogenic Sleep", the band set forth a new offering to please the listening public: "Emotronic" on Propain Records.
    As the title of the album might imply, this is a rather deep and somewhat melancholy album, the songs are all very well structured, and usually have just the right mix of elements to get the true feeling of the song across to the listener. The vocals (by the lovely Raiana) are both beautiful and haunting, yet at times can sound almost down right childishly innocent, (think along the lines of a much more seductive Tina Root, and you might get the idea). The vocals only come in second however to the amazing, almost epic electronic melodies accompanying it, by epic I mean a sort of VNV Nationish influence, the kind that really just give that rush to your head as your heart finds that it's truly part of a larger whole. The only really bad things I have to point out, because they tend to drive me up the wall, are the guitars. There are points, especially early in the cd, that the grinding of the guitars become rather overpowering, making it sound more like an attempt at heavy metal than what I felt it was truly intended to be.
    The over all sound of the album is a mix somewhere in betweenelectronic/rave along the lines of Lords of Acid, with some trip hopinfluence mixed into the vocals. The songs all have their own unique stylings too, but not to the point where you might think that it was done by different artists, but rather they truly seem to evolve as the disk goes on, ranging from the almost noise of the opening track, to the moving and melancholy cover of "always on my mind". This disk is highly recommended for those with an interest in the production of electronic music, as one can easily tell that it was a disk tailor made for the DJ crowd. Definitely a unique sound that is more than what it seems at first glance.

--Jed Hartgrove