I’ve never been one to spend much time listening to electronic music; the dubstep craze left a scar on my early teens, and I simply don’t find much use for the genre as anything other than background music. I also don’t know a thing about what makes good electronic music simply because I haven’t listened to enough of it to have a discerning ear. To be totally honest, the only reason I gave Keys N Krates’ first official album a listen was because I saw a Tory Lanez feature on one of the songs. To my surprise, I found solid project that does a decent job incorporating hip-hop and R&B elements while staying true to the electronic sound.
Keys N Krates is a three-man group from Toronto that go back about a decade. Drummer Adam Tune, keyboardist Adam Matisse, and turntablist Jr. Flo are the men behind the music, and their biggest record to date is probably the wildly annoying, decently popular song “Dum Dee Dum” from 2013. Cura was released on Steve Aoki’s Dim Mak label, and the lead track “Inicio” kicks things off with some throbbing guitar chords and a slow build to a surprisingly tidy chorus of high-pitched horns and a hip-hop inspired bass mixed in with weird synths and vocal samples. This clean fusion of genres is what works best for the group, and it leads to triumphs such as the next song. “Music to My Ears” is a hugely upbeat, energetic track with a perfectly toned vocal performance from Tory Lanez. Tory has quietly rebuilt his catalogue after the two-bad-mixtapes-on-the-same-day fiasco, and comes through here with a nice performance on the chorus and verses. The beat lets Tory breathe on the verses before exploding into a mash of chords, synths and drums on the chorus that combine for quite an impact.
The rest of the instrumental tracks are solid as well. “Do What You Do” samples some female vocals, chops it up, and sprinkles it in various places over a boosted kick-snare and ever-present synths. It’s a testament to the skill of Jr. Flo to take the sample and layer/utilize it all over the song. “Cura” plays like a purposely half-baked hit of futuristic, bouncy bass and faded piano keys that swells and retreats mysteriously without ever becoming fully realized. “Something Wonderful” uses some, uh, wonderful keys, a very slight kick-snare, and vocals to build to a big EDM break, but the song is better when the some of the extra elements fade away and we are left with those keys and the quick baseline. “Harps at Nights” is exactly what it sounds like, and the track lets the harps go pretty much on their own. It’s a slow song, but it’s not sad; you could assign a range of vibes to the track.
The problems for Keys N Krates emerge when faced with outside vocalists. “Glitter” feels like it’s trying too hard, and the lyrics are poorly sung and corny. The beat goes nicely at punchy tempo with some oddly distorted strings in the background, but the “shine like glitter” line becomes too much after the millionth repetition. “Flute Loop” is a miss in every sense for me, as it is the only bad beat from start to finish on the project. It’s hard not to laugh as a shrill, barren flute hisses along over Alvin and the Chipmunks singing “I like to play the flute.” It’s horrifically bad, but it’s only one song. “My Night” is the closer and the most hip-hop we get from Keys N Krates. The 808s pair nicely with the eerie, echoing synths, but the vocals from 070 Shake are a mixed bag, especially the layered sung vocals on the hook. The work she does on the verses and with the non-layered singing creates a nice vibe, but the layering was a small misstep. Still, “My Night” is the second-strongest collaboration on the project and improves with repeated listens.
I’d say Cura was quite a pleasant surprise. It delivered one outstanding track, one decent track, and five solid instrumentals, which is much more than I expected at the off. Keys N Krates deserve a hand for working expertly off each other and playing to their strength: electronic music with hip-hop influence. Their missteps were likely made in search of crossover appeal (unsurprisingly, the two songs I hated have the most SoundCloud plays by a mile), but their creativity also deserves recognition. Their sound stood out to me, a music listener who exists firmly outside the world of electronic music and their target audience. That’s a good sign for Keys N Krates, and with a world tour upcoming, I imagine more and more listeners outside the electronic niche will begin to take notice.