emailed: November 7, 2005

Dear Kid606,

As a music fan whose sensibilities and standards have been largely shaped by your work, I feel compelled to let you know I can't stand Resilience, and to respectfully ask you to not make anything like it in the future.

You probably already know my complaint with the record. Suffice it to say, I don't think it is "tweaked just enough to not sink into [...] formulaic complacence"and I wonder if that is even a worthy goal. I mean, just don't be surprised when you start getting contacted by car commercial and radio documentary types.

You've been around just long enough for nobody to hate you anymore, and that's a very dangerous thing. I think of Beck and Sea Change. And everything from Resilience's cover art to your own statements about the record make me worry that you, like Beck, are pretty sure this is the album which best expresses the real you, when instead it expresses very little at all.

Still, Who Still Kill Sound was recent enough for me to have hope. And you might be surprised to read that I found that minor album more affecting, stimulating and bliss-giving than Resilience, which sounds more like an exercise than anything of yours I've heard before.

I am not writing to ask for more of what you've already done. "Done with the Scene"suggests you might be as bored as I am with the transformation of the work you did 4 or 5 years ago into a palette of clichés for every new breakcore artist. I only want you to continue, as you have all the way up to Resilience, to gamble with high stakes.

But if you'll ignore my request and the new album is an indication of your work to come, then thanks for everything else.

Yours,

Lev Kalman

P.S. I make good music videos, and would love to make one for you whenever you're up for it (maybe next time). Here's a link to one I did with Books on Tape:

http://www.rollerderbysuperstar.com/beatpunk/stonesvideo.html

Enjoy!