I suppose in a live situation, the spectacle of two checker-clad thin men playing spastic lo-fi synth music while generally spazzing out in front of a video screen might make for some fun for awhile. On record, though, Yip Yip have largely been pulling the same sort of duty for several albums in a row now, and sadly their fourth full-length album Two Kings Of The Same Kingdom is even more uniform and predictable than their previous release In the Reptile House. It's not for lack of trying, as the duo introduce some new instruments into the mix on this newest effort (including a real saxophone, an organ, and some live percussion), but it's largely all for naught.

And so, twelve songs rush by in just under twenty five minutes, and if you don't get enough of it on the CD version, the group has created lo-fidelity videos for each song and included them on a separate DVD. Sadly, many of the videos recycle the same video loops and lo-fi, 80s-era community access television effects. The end result is twelve videos that are largely substitutable for one another, not exactly what I was looking for when individual songs by the group are so hard to distinguish from one another as it is.

Musically, you know what you're getting if you've heard the group before, as they take a slew of old school synths and churn out song after song of sugar-rush casio-pop that's chock full of aimless noodling melodies that seem like they should stick but are simply here and gone so fast that it's hard for anything to lodge in your head. I can give them props for the clanging "Humanly Wanderers," where the aforementioned sax falls in alongside some squirrelly synths and almost industrial percussion, but the same sorts of building blocks are used on the downright horrible "Jazz Rats," which sounds incredibly overlong at two minutes. If you've heard the group and enjoy their crazy casio mucking-about, Two Kings Of The Same Kingdom might be for you. It's all grainy, hyperactive melodies piled on top of melodies, and it's something I could personally go a long time without hearing again.