Electronica-Indietronic | Feature | Pop

The Tidy Kid: Three Eps, Selected Works

Toot Toot! | Tidy Kid is Marly Uyma Lüske, born Australian but living in places all over Europe and the US. The travelling type, this is for sure. His oeuvre is confusing, there are remix albums, free stuff, pay-for-download music, collaborations, compilations... well. Bettina got in contact and took the tour de force, listening to everything. Here's an artists you don't want to miss.

In 2006, Tidy Kid released the first EP "People Sit In Cars" via his own label Tidy Kid Music. You can stream this six tracks treasure chest on his website or simply buy the limited CD via cdbaby. The musical concept is, roughly spoken, to mix awkward Indiepop with elements of Electronica and Psychedelia. No Indietronics but Pop in capital letters with a grounding of electronic music. Two tracks from this EP are free for download, and these two are wonderful, especially the neo-60's Pop of "Kommt" (the sequence of the song titles is "Ein Kleines Bein Kommt Zuhause Angehuepft" which means "A Small Leg Comes Jumping at Home"... WTF?). Talking about Tidy's voice, James McNew of Yo La Tengo and Dump might be a good comparison.

EP number two was published by Mexican Umor Rex Netlabel for free download (website down at the moment, back soon!). Tidy Kid enhances the element of melancholia in his music for "My Frozen Flower Pot" and sounds a bit more British than on "People Sit In Cars"... Probably Thom Yorke's solo output comes to your mind as well. At the same time, Tidy emancipates himself from the slightly naive programming of his older works and expands both into experimentalism and shameless melodies. Tracks "Flower" and "Smell" are awesome.

Third is Lüske's "Fragments EP". Six tracks and sketches that document the music, Tidy Kid improvised for a piece of performing arts by Nick McGavern in February 2008 in Brisbane, Australia. Kid remixed the tunes, arranged the pieces and published them via Acroplane Netlabel earlier this year. With it's loose beats, scattered sounds and overall improvisation feel, this one is probably NOT the record to start with- though there are some nice things to find. At least, fragments "2"and "3" are worth the effort.

Tidy Kid's Kinderzimmer

There is much more to find on his website. If you dig the songs I put in the player, switch over to www.tidykid.com and find out about it. Froggi Records cassette label, for example, are going to publish EP number four entitled "One Week With My Casio" very soon and a full-length is said to go public in early 2009.

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