Since 1992, Kynt has been possibly the only New Orleans artist recording and performing electronic house music. A rocky childhood in foster homes compelled Kynt to sneak out at night to dance at gay French Quarter clubs. The music there inspired him toward his own original house compositions, several of which have found their way onto European top-ten dance lists, compilation by the likes of EMI Germany and the turntables of dance music gods Junior Vasquez and Roger Sanchez. After several years away from music, The Whole World Is a Stage is Kynt’s first proper album.
In house music, we’re used to the singer having as much import as the keyboards, and not as much as the bass drum. Here, Kynt is clearly the star, front and center. He considers these to be songs more than tracks, which is why they have twice as many lyrics as your average house music. And Kynt wants credit for writing these songs; his stylized, futuristic face is splashed across his album and its accompanying PR. He is a Loyola University-trained dancer, and his live shows focus on this skill. In the end, he has more in common with Michael Jackson than most faceless electronic artists.
Kynt really is doing something unique in bringing the New Orleans tradition of live and raw musical performance onto a more modern dance floor. He obviously—and admirably—doesn’t use Auto-Tune. But as a result, his organic voice sometimes sounds out of place over completely inorganic, borderline cold techno. The pitch-perfection of the tracks sometimes highlights imperfections in Kynt’s voice in a way that a live band would not. He does manage to turn a few aerobicized dance tracks into something more special than we’re used to from the genre, but his unadorned voice—which could be likened at times to a hype Stevie Wonder—sounds better paired with the album’s forays into drum-n-bass and especially slower electronic R&B.
On paper, Kynt’s music is exactly what we claim to want from techno: a little more soul, more humanity, a little less plastic sheen. As talented and brave as Kynt certainly is, in the end his music may be too much like conventional techno for fans of pop songs, but too real for those who want to dance without so much human interference. But if you’re open-minded and love techno and pop, Kynt might provide your answer.
