Kim Dotcom: Good Times (kimdotcom)

Is there not an irony that Kim Dotcom -- a man whose business model involves not paying for the creative work of others -- should appear on the cover of a weekly music guide which is available in record stores?

If there is an irony, then the editors seemed not to have noticed, or maybe like so many they were seduced by the strange charisma and cachet the big man seems to enjoy.

The odd thing about his album is that it seems much less "his" album than that of the many who have lined up to supply the fairly generic dance beats, which actually sound alarmingly dated.

His robotic vocals -- imagine a suburban Kraftwerk wannabe on the inane Dance Dance Dance -- are so vacuous as to be irrelevant so the heavy lifting (well, not that heavy) falls to beat-makers/producers SleepDeez, Printz Board and others, and the vocalists Amari and Ilati who take up most of the space.

New Zealand guests on hand are Tiki Taane, Aaron Tokona and others who must have enjoyed the payday and the playtime with the astutely self-promoting Dotcom. (Although Taane must have had to bite his tongue when handed the lyrics.)

Dotcom's wife Mona features on Take Me Away (she sings the heavily echoed title but little more) which isn't bad at all, in a rather familiar dancefloor way.

There will always be those who argue the whole "so bad it's good" line about anything, but that's hard to do here beause it's neither good nor excrutiatingly bad.

It just is what it is. Which is rather lame electrobeat dance with funny bits (Beathoven is straight from the Seventies when people discovered Moog synthesisers and the classical repertoire) and Autotune.

And a barely visible/audible Kim Dotcom who appears to be the executive producer rather than performer. 

But it commits the greatest crime in dance, it sounds utterly sexless. 

It does have one virtue however. It is cheap. Just $10 at JB Hi-Fi.

But really, should you buy it? Or just download it free somehow?

That would not be ironic at all. It would actually seem the right thing to do.