EXCLUSIVE: Stream ‘Highbrow’, the first track from Kiri
A couple of months ago I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and went to a house show at Vulture Street in East Brisbane. House shows are a totally different creature to a venue show. You can’t just stand in a dark corner, play with your phone and hope nobody sees you. They are going to see you at a house show. They are going to say hello.
This makes house shows both superior and infinitely more terrifying. Still, I pushed myself to go because Oslow were playing and they’re one of the best bands in the country at the moment. But on top of that, it was going to be the first show for a new band called Kiri.
I had been keeping an eye out for this band for sometime. A couple of years back I had loved a local band called El Alamein, who played noodle-y and super catchy math-rock, and Kiri was the first band to feature a couple of prominent members together again after El Alamein had broken up.
While it was clear it was their first show and they were still ironing out some kinks and finding their sound, Kiri blew me away. Know they’re releasing their debut 7” and we’ve got the first track to show you. It’s called ‘Highbrow’ and you can hear it below, followed by a quick interview with Uda and the track listing and artwork.
Who are the members of Kiri and what bands have you been in before?
Tessa does vocals, Cam plays bass, Julian plays drums, and I (Uda) play guitar / vocoder / synthesizer.
Tess sang in Notre, Cam played in Open Sea & Wallow and also currently plays in You. Julian and I played El Alamein. Julian has also drummed in Capeweather and made beats in Nana Vigilante.
There’s a large 90s skramz vibe to Kiri, do you have any key influences from this period?
To be honest, not really haha. When we write we focus on flow, vibe and energy, making songs sound like environments and thought processes’ we dabble in. It might be flying, drowning, electrocution, a post apocalyptic dance party, a whack-a-mole, a haunting reminder that the future is always in our hands and how beautiful that can be.
Some of these ideas I just thought of, some of them have always been there; the fact that these emotions and thought processes can constantly change, engage, and vary from person to person is an aspect of music we have never focused upon or actively used as an art form. I think it is the most exciting part of being in Kiri.
Whilst ideas are at the front of our minds when writing, aesthetically I think bands like These Arms Are Snakes, Daughters, The Mars Volta, Q and Not U, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Hot Cross, and Raein is where we learnt to play/perform our respective instruments as we do. Industrial/noise/synthpunk/hip hop artists such as HTRK, Son Lux, My Disco, Ministry, Watkin Tudor Jones, and Shabazz Palaces guide us in terms of how we can use our instruments in different ways.
You’ve chosen to go with a single guitarist. Was this a deliberate choice or just how it ended up?
How it ended up. When Julian and I first started jamming we were trying to do something Lightning Bolt-esque and using lots of modulation/octave effects on guitar to thicken up tones opposed to using distortion. When we first started jamming with Tessa & Cam it didn’t really fill out our sound, but more so the textures of the instruments/vocals/introduction of synth danced around each other to really make every element glow. There is so much going on in every part of every song, not overwhelmingly, but only if you choose to focus upon it.
You played your first show a couple of months back with Oslow at a house on Vulture Street. Since then, you’ve played a handful of shows in Brisbane, completed a mini east coast tour and recorded a 7”. What’s the key to your productivity?
Kiri means milk in Sinhalese (my native tongue), and collectively we all mess with the idea of “does it matter where the milk comes from, or only what it can build”. I think this mentality is embedded throughout our artwork, formats of release, how we tour/types of show we play, our writing, and even how we get along with our day to day lives strangely. I had a shoulder reconstruction earlier this year after we initially started writing which put me out for a few months and Tess is travelling to South America in December, in the time we had left we wanted to build. From being in other bands, writing zines, and running labels all the tools were just waiting to be picked up.
We’ve seen the excessive amounts of conversation put to things like what Emma Watson actually meant by her speech on feminism, who did what first in the conflicts between ISIL, Syria, Iraq, and the West, who is pulling the weight in their friendships/relationships etc etc. Whilst our analyses on these things help us become “efficient”, there is more emphasis on blame and a dangerous flirtation that there is a singular method of perception. We disregard that we have a choice, and get lost trying to find meaning, when we all share the capability to create meaning in our own unique ways, I think this is one of the most beautiful things in the universe.
Now back to the actual question, celebrating the simple idea that we have a choice empowers Kiri. We hope to invite and empower those around us.
Uda your previous band was the fruity/twinkly El Alamein. While there are certainly hints of this sound still present, Kiri is definitely a heavier musical effort. What drew you to move in this direction?
I wouldn’t call the change between El Alamein to Kiri a change in direction, but more so a change in what I wanted music to mean to me, as highlighted in earlier questions. I would like to believe we could “change direction” and still inherently be Kiri.
What is a former and current band that Kiri would love to share the stage with?
Going off all the mumbo jumbo I said before i’d probably say any band hey. However more so than who, I think we would be more interested on collaborative sets with other musicians, incorporating other art forms.
What should we expect from the 7”?
The 7” is raw. We recorded it ourselves, it’s live, it is with flaws but it is 100% Kiri. When we went into recording we didn’t want to set a standard that we could not perfect and enhance upon live.
How was the recording process?
It took longer than expected as we were trying to do it ourselves. Lots of indecision to where we would record it, whether we would track or do it live, what we were actually recording for haha. Two pre-production attempts at home, two legit days at Via Studios, and a few days of mixing later we had a hesh job. Ryan Schwabe (Rosetta, Restorations, Algernon Cadwallader, Sport) mastered it in a day and added some of that sparkle. The process was well worth it.
Any longer term plans for the band?
More collaborations with other artists, more theatre, more visuals, messing with different forms of releasing things we create, regional/rural touring of Australia, touring overseas. I just thought of all these things, but all I can say is that Kiri is here to stay.
Track List
1. Above The Hearth
2. Only a Consensus Will Please
3. Chatter in the Skull
4. Highbrow
Kiri’s S/T debut 7” is set to be released very soon through the Eunoia Collective and Lacklustre Records. Keep up with the band at their Facebook page. Photo by Joe Andersons.
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