KIT is a super-melodic experimental rock band mainly from Los Angeles, California. They were recently described by Rob Barber of High Places as “a strange intersection where Void meet Incredible String Band”, and this gives some insight into their wonderful muddling of genres. They play fast, short and defiant songs that mess with the ideas of pop music and wayward punk. Maybe they'll start off playing a song straight - sweetness and light abounds - but before you know it everything gets flipped on its head and chased into damaged terrain. KIT songs can typically embrace hardcore rush, pop verse, jagged noise and cheer rally, all within the same moment - nothing but raw energy and instinctive songwriting holding it all together.
KIT is Kristy (vocals / yelps), Steve (guitar / thrashing), Vice Cooler (drums / freakouts) and George (guitar / feedback). Said members also perform in The Raincoats, XBXRX, Common Eider King Eider, Hawnay Troof, Snowsuit* and Warbler. To date the band has released four split 7" singles (with Thurston Moore/Kim Gordon, Deerhoof, Wives, and Captain Ahab w/ Rose For Bohdan), 2007's debut album on Upset The Rhythm, and last year's EP, also on UTR, which saw Mike Watt (Minutemen etc.) join the band on second bass duties.
INVOCATION is KIT's second full-length and sees them producing a decidedly more reflective and considered album. Rooted in the occult and metaphysics, the album is drenched in West Coast sunshine noir. It's a contradiction of excessive over-the-top speed-demon pop and ominous leviathans lurking right below the surface. After spending nearly two years recording its debut album, Broken Voyage, KIT's individual members found themselves dividing their time between work, school, more touring, and other musical pursuits. That album received critical praise and was noted for its electronic cut-up style, and the band toured the UK and the Southwest United States with Deerhoof. While still maintaining the spontaneity of their past efforts, the band acquired a newfound level of strength in composition and melody. Recorded at the Department of Safety in Anacortes, Washington aka "Nowhere" (before this legendary all-ages art space shut down), the band removed all its familiar comfort zones for the sessions of INVOCATION. The northern latitude meant longer days to work in and a refurbished fire station to play with, the sound of its concrete halls folding into Phil Elverum's (Microphones, Mount Eerie) unorthodox recording. The isolation pulled the band out of its typical California home recording element. Going all analog tape for recording forced the group to rethink its process in terms of real time and maximizing each track's potential. Elverum's unique recording merged well with the band's past DIY self-produced recording ethic. Guest appearances of violinist Nora Danielson (The Intima, Mirah) and bassist Themba Lewis (The Intima, Tara Jane O'Neil) add a contour to the recording that makes its presence most strongly felt on "Dreams Are Burned" (another version appears on the 7" EP with Mike Watt).
INVOCATION is an album about fixation, destiny and total, complete honesty. The album overspills with melodies and ideas that turn inside out over and over again, an album of happy accidents and exhilarating leaps of faith. INVOCATION marks an area of lyrical maturity for the band. Singer/lyricist Kristy Geschwadtner says it's about "how the people you love (doesn’t have to be romantic) are revolving around you like planets, you are their sun. Their life revolves around you and that can take a lot of getting used to”. Other sources of inspiration include Kenneth Anger's "Invocation of My Demon Brother."
“Merticane” kicks off the album, with jarring guitars and drums preparing a near explosive drama for Kristy’s tale of awkward dawning love to unfold. “Ambrosia” is the most prototypical light-footed KIT song tackling their punk pop unrest in a new way, pushing through convention, adding their own uplifting uneasiness to proceedings. "Cure Light Wounds" springs and recoils as it unwinds into a chorus of insistent demands, “Won’t you mend my broken heart?,” pleads Kristy, increasingly frenzied. "Out Of Ruins” resolves out of restraint, its heavy tread of twisting feedback and lurching chaos plunges into an ice cold pool of introspection that the band tries to escape to no avail. “Broke Heart” closes the album with a delightful twist, the initial burst of liveliness crumbling into a reverberating three-minute coda of ascendant bass and guitar drone with building percussion that becomes progressively more epic and resplendent at the same time, Boredoms-style. With INVOCATION, KIT have created a record that enjoys defying expectations. KIT successfully captures everything between excitement and heartbreak; a sense of wonderment at the interactions contained in the world around us, all without calling on higher powers or casting any spells.
|
