Zox The Fox Concept Album / Kidney Disaster 3

The start of a new year is a chance to take stock, reset, and look to the future anew. For the avid music fan, it's a blank slate. End of year lists are done and dusted, and consensus has been reached on (or, at least, a website has aggregated a bunch of lists in an attempt to determine) what the best album of the previous twelve months was.

Personally, after New Year's has finished, I'm always keen to dive headfirst into new albums, but that's an attitude not generally shared by the music industry, which is always slow to recover from its post-holiday hangover, and tends to come out coughing and spluttering rather than alive and kicking. That means there's a real opportunity to make a mark with a landmark January release and, while The Weeknd arguably did that in 2022 with Dawn FM, it's a chance that's usually not taken.

This period of relative inactivity presumably forms part of the rationale for Zox The Fox to release not one, but two, separate albums in the first week of 2023. Kidney Disaster 3 comes hot on the heels of -- you'll be surprised to learn -- Kidney Disaster and Kidney Disaster 2 while the cover of Concept Album defiantly states: "This album is way better than To Pimp a Butterfly."

Spoiler alert: neither of these albums is better than To Pimp a Butterfly. Actually, they're not even fit to hold a candle to Butterfly by Crazy Town. In fact, they might just be the two worst records ever made.

Listening to either Concept Album or Kidney Disaster 3 will make you question what the actual purpose of music is. It sounds as if they've been recorded by accident while Zox The Fox (occasionally joined by Lil Charmin, whose Spotify bio reads that they create "meme music") messes around on GarageBand, presumably while high as balls. Random bursts of harsh noise interrupt almost every track, lyrics are mumbled unintelligably and, on the occasions where there's an attempt to sing a melody, you'll wish Zox The Fox hadn't bothered. There are no "songs" in the traditional sense, which isn't necessarily a criticism if there was a hint that Zox The Fox were attempting to deconstruct the form or convey a message, but there isn't the slightest scintilla of anything like that going on here. The painfully lo-fi production leans towards a bedroom pop aesthetic, but that's too kind a comparison when there's such a blatant paucity of ideas. In an extremely generous reading, you might be tempted to make a case for this being outsider art, but to do so would be to mistakenly claim there's anything of interest within these records. Instead, they sound exactly like what they are: the sound of a person fannying about and a convincing argument for bringing back National Service.

It's difficult to imagine the level of inebriation required to find time spent in the company of Concept Album or Kidney Disaster 3 a pleasurable experience. Intentionally misspelt song titles like Aaron Where's Sandals for the First Time and Your'e Baracco Barner show as much wit as a middle-school edgelord and just add to the overall air of disappointment and, ultimately, despair.

Zeroes are not handed out lightly on this website, but there are genuinely only two positive points when considering Concept Album and Kidney Disaster 3. Firstly, Kidney Disaster 3's THERE IS SOMEONE IN MY HOUSE stumbles into something resembling a melody at one point but, given all the available evidence, we can probably put that down to dumb luck. Secondly, there's something genuinely inspiring in the fact these two albums have been released. If Zox The Fox can get his "work" made available on every major streaming platform going, there truly is hope for us all.

In 2024, I'm going to sit tight and wait for the proper records to be released.