COUNTLESS BANDS CAN trace their beginnings to one or maybe two significant and serendipitously accidental meetings, but Diet Kong, the collaborative effort between the Brooklyn-based, husband-and-wife team of Keith Gladysz and Jenn Penn is highly unusual and touching, even for the most cynical music fan.
“You know, we go way back, me and Jen,” Gladsyz explains in a phone interview from Diet Kong’s rehearsal space and recording studio in the Catskills. “We actually dated in seventh grade, and we lost touch for years and years and then we met up again at NYU. We got together in ‘99. It’s been 10 years, [and] we’ve been married for four.”
The earliest roots of Diet Kong as a band begin with Gladysz and Penn’s mutual love of art: He is an artist with an interest in graphic design, acting and music, while she works in video, writing and design. “Huntington is sort of the cultural center of that part of Long Island. There are a number of cool bands out there,” Gladysz says, referring to his birthplace. And it was in Huntington where both Penn and Gladsyz started to get involved in the local arts scene. Coincidentally, Gladysz’s good friend Alan Semerdjian was the caretaker of Walt Whitman’s birthplace, a hot spot ground for local artists. When Gladysz and Penn hung out there, they formed a bond with Semerdjian, who they eventually asked to join the band on guitar.
Diet Kong takes influence from a diverse set of bands, including Depeche Mode, the Pixies, Digital Underground and the German minimalist electronic outfit Pole, along with more mainstream acts like Radiohead and Beck. “I’d say that growing up, I was heavily influenced by New Order and all of that electronic rock stuff,” Gladysz admits. And even with those influences, Diet Kong has a rather unique sound.
The lyrical content of its songs at times has a bratty, sometimes obnoxious quality while managing to be funny in an offbeat and sophomoric manner.The music varies between hard-charging rock songs (wall of sound production, guitars sounding like car alarms) and electronica (blips and beeps with tightly syncopated and precise rhythms), and most of the band’s songs have a moment of muscular insistence behind the playfulness, and a dark, sinister undertone. Imagine a 4 a.m. coke party on that precarious tightrope between fun and disaster.
The band, however, does manage to balance the urge to party with an avant- garde sensibility at its live shows. It should be no surprise to see a weird video display that manages to fit perfectly with the songs and the lyrics in a way that’s uncanny and unpredictable. As Gladysz explains, the video part of the band’s live show is largely improvised and based on his own animation, footage that both he and Penn have shot and found footage. Penn manages to use a DJ-style mixer to mix and play with the video component of the show as she plays keyboards. At shows, Gladysz says, “people are dancing, so we’re going to push the elements to keep that going on more,” whereas “if we have a crowd that isn’t as high energy, we might do something different.We have to react to the situation.”
> Diet Kong
Aug. 31, The Studio At Webster Hall, 125 E. 11th St. (betw. 3rd & 4th Aves.), 212-353-1600; 8, FREE. Also, Sept. 5 at Park Avenue Armory.
Sinibaldi
