KFM – \\\fail
11.28.17 by Mike Haley

kfmfail

I don’t know much about computers. I’ve never seen the 1995 crime-drama Hackers, and the only thing I remember from The Net is when Sandra Bullock’s character Angela orders a pizza from the site pizza.net. I do have strong memories of playing, very well I might add, a game called Jezzball on Windows 3.11. That, and being reminded by my dad to constantly defrag. We were ALWAYS defragging. Maybe all of that obsessive defragging paid off, because I never had a computer shit out on me. I did manage to spill an entire cup of coffee into the works of my current HP, but technical support somehow managed to de-coffee all of the motherboards and had me surfing sites like pizza.net in no time.

It would appear that KFM has not been #blessed with such luck. “My piece of shit hard drive died, leaving me with these unfinished tracks.” That is how KFM describes “\\\fail.”  I suppose it’s far too late to contact any of the computer repair services in his hometown of Millville, NJ. I wont even suggest defragging at this point. What’s done is done and these 20 tracks have been put out into the world. So are they unfinished? I mean, there existence would suggest that they are finished, right? There is no going back to that piece of shit hard drive to collect whatever was on it. The tape is out. It is finished. But is anything really finished? I’d wager one could trot on over to a record store in Millville right now and pick up multiple variants of “Rumours” with contrasting remasterings, retoolings, and audio defraggings. Would you consider “Rumours” to be “finished?” Do you want to get high and have that conversation? No? Okay…

“\\\fail” is not “Rumours.” And finished or unfinished, it’s an excellent collection of music with an ever-swaying emotional disorder. I wouldn’t recommend jamming this for your crew though. Let’s consider it alone music. The synthesizers will sometimes throw you behind the wheel of a super fancy 1990’s sports car, but sometimes they’ll jam you on a packed city bus next to a guy with nose crusties. One second you’re marveling at how moisturized your skins is, then some creep is whispering to you about anal sex. Seriously, there is a song called “a s s p l a y” with decelerated conversations about anal sex. And you know what? It’s not just listenable. It’s really good! KFM manages to make that something worth listening to. But, like I said, these are alone songs. I guess you could attempt a group listen… You could sit in the middle of a circle of friends, playing “\\\fail” on a shitty boombox while doing live commentary. “Okay, you guys remember that squiggly techno thing? Okay. Okay. Here comes some squiggly Faith No More type booger. Okay. Okay.” It wont end well. You’ll just look weird.

Now everyone defrag and head on over to pizza.net to buy a copy of this (un)finished cassette tape, which was made in an edition of 100 by the way.