What do you want from a debut album? It’s often said that a first album, like a first novel, acts as a record of everything the author has done up to that point, the culmination of years of slow and steady evolution. Which is fine up to a point, but presumes the inclusion of styles and features a band has shaken off, left behind in the process. It’s already dated if it dwells too long on its gestation period, and Fanatical Love succeeds so well because Kutosis focus so sharply on the band they are now, and the band they might yet be.

It doesn’t hurt that the album positively roars off the blocks. Poised for the 60-second duration of the sleight-of-hand opening sound collage, they come out swinging with the killer one-two combination of ‘Salton Sea’ and recent single ‘Shadows’. The former briefly, blissfully, renders Exit_International wholly unnecessary, its shuddering, elastic bass and furious yelping reminiscent of early Mclusky. ‘Shadows’ is the clearest sign yet of their full-blooded pop skills, whipsmart Les Savy Fav art-punk that doesn’t waste a single second. Followed swiftly by the taut, efficient noise of its flipside ‘Skin’, another killer chorus sharpened to bleeding point by Rory Attwell’s crisp production job, the opening salvo serves as an expert repurposing of what we already know Kutosis do well; fat-free garage punk shorn of swagger and machismo and peppered with insistent hooks.

For all the thrills in the relentless first act, it’s the variations that reward most on repeat. ‘Battle Lake’ arrives on a monolithic bass-heavy groove, and the tempo shift and use of space and dynamics are utterly striking. Attwell’s hand is sensed on the tiller here; the metallic, see-sawing guitar stabs and falsetto bridge vocals recall another of his clients, recent Joy Collective guests Cold Pumas. Here, and on the closing ‘Breeders’, Kutosis are exactly the kind of muscular, effective noise-punks his old band Test-Icicles might have been if they didn’t act like such dicks.

Whatever you expected of them, a two-part dubbed out instrumental probably wasn’t it. The shoegazey guitar shimmer, bone-rattling bass and echo-heavy drums recall Ride, of all bands, circa ‘Leave Them All Behind’, no bad thing indeed and typical of a promising breadth of intent across the album’s last section. The results – the moody, brittle anthemicism of ‘Lights To Lead Us’ and the harsh sheet-metal guitars and clanging tension of ‘Miniatures’ – are icily foreboding, the lyrics darker in tone and speaking of emptiness and exhaustion. It’s carried by a production job that might have failed a lesser band but complements their ambition superbly; nothing feels tokenistic or a lead-booted attempt at gravitas. It’s still the simple things that make Fanatical Love work best, though; the beefed-up up low-end for maximum Death From Above danceability, the flawless sequencing and pacing, the indelible hooks. They’re not taking the straightest, simplest route, that of the one-dimensional punk band with a few fag packet social commentary lyrics. The simple things nailed, the next stage marked out; they’re far more than that.

Ian, Jim and Ben from Kutosis kindly put together a track-by-track commentary for the album for us.  Synch your eyes with the CD, DVD or both and enjoy it in real time!  Like a director’s commentary, except without all the dull bits where they talk about lenses and that.

1. #asongtostartarecordwith

We wanted to start the album with a short burst of strange sounds rather than a normal song. It’s like a gateway to the rest of the album. One minute of processed sounds played on the bass, along with cymbals, toms, white noise and feedback. The video for this song was made by Ellen Campesinos and features a brief cameo from Adam Chard, who’s designed the artwork for the album, playing a dead body.

2. Salton Sea

Salton Sea is a place in California that was a holiday destination for the rich and famous in the 1950s. It’s since become largely abandoned and desolate. A big thank you should go to Dan Barnett of Samoans who as well as transporting us to and from London for the album sessions provided some understated backing vocals to balance all the yelping in the chorus. Our friend Lt Meat made an excellent video for this song, pieced together from hundreds of long exposure photographs.

3. Shadows

As soon as we wrote this song we realised it was going to be the single. It’s got lots of different sections but still adds up to three and a half minutes. Normally songs that sound like single material are written really quickly but we took a bit more time with this one, starting with the chorus and working ‘outwards’.

4. Skin

This is a song about finding your sense of place in an unfamiliar city. It’s got a spoken word part at the start of the song which is a combination of different phrases and sentences we took from a magazine and put together. We shot the video for this song with Tom Betts who runs the Movie Maker nights at Chapter Arts in Cardiff. He had us running around Cardiff dressed as spies which was enormous fun.

5. Battle Lake

It feels wrong picking a favourite song on your own album – it’s like a parent saying they have a favourite child – but this one really stands out for us. It starts off very structured with a lot of space between the instruments and ends up being satisfyingly messy and noisy.

6. House Sounds

House Sounds is a song about getting desensitised to things you once found exciting. ‘The party never ends!’ refrain is more jaded than joyous. The title is taken from an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which we’re big fans of. The video was made by a San Francisco based collective called Dreams For Dead Cats. We’re extremely grateful to them as they volunteered to step in and make this video at very short notice.

7. Devo

This song is our personal homage to Devo. Channel 5 used it in their trailer for the new season of NCIS. It’s never a bad thing to have a song associated with a naval criminal drama.

8. Islands vs Oceans I

Islands vs Oceans is an instrumental we wrote which we broke into two parts for the album. It ushers in the darker final third of the album. The video was directed by Bafta award winner Matt Brown and a bunch of his very talented friends.

9. Lights To Lead Us

This was the biggest departure we took compared to the other songs we had written for the album. It’s our first five minute song, and we were aiming for a shift in mood from the start of the album. The video, directed by Jason Marsh, is very disturbing but in the best possible way.

10. Miniatures

We demo’d this song before we’d written most of the album. We didn’t think it quite fitted in with what we were doing at the time but some of our friends who heard it made us see it in a different light. We re-worked it a bit and now can’t imagine we ever considered not including it.

11. Islands vs Oceans II

Err, Islands vs Oceans round two! The bass gets dirty, the guitar goes weird and the drums get massive. If you play Lights To Lead Us and Miniatures really loud, you can actually hear Islands vs Oceans in the background. Try it!

12. Breeders

Unlike Devo, Breeders isn’t intended as a homage to Kim Deal’s band of the same name. We became Twin Peaks obsessives around the time we wrote this song. It starts with some evil sounding keys and gets more disconcerting from there. Dave Roberts and Nic Britz of Dangerous Doug Films made a great video for this that really complements the music.

Keef’s full review will be along shortly (along with a guide by the band themselves), but you can note these celebratory dates now. The first launch night happens in fine style at Chapter Arts Centre, taking over the monthly MovieMaker upcoming artists slot to show the ten music videos especially commissioned for the album. From Ellen Los Campesinos! to BAFTA dude Matt Brown to MovieMaker’s own hero Tom Betts, there’s some good stuff there, only some of them featuring the band being murdered. AND – live musical launching will take place at beautiful Clwb Ifor Bach a few days after, also with another of Keef’s fave bands Vvolves, as well as Without Maps and Effort’s winningly slack pop. PLUS – Kutosis take to the road with fellow Cardiff screamers Samoans for a jaunt that takes in Bristol’s Croft on the 13th. Time to get fanatical, he said poorly. 

Exciting change to the programme this month: in August we launched a contest to produce music videos for every track on Kutosis’ upcoming album, and on Monday 07/11 we’re going to be screening all the results! Admission is free and all are welcome. However, tickets still need to be collected from the box office and since so many of you lovely people have been coming lately (and the cinema only has 60 seats) it’s sometimes best to pick them up early. More details and links to previous films screened can be found on the MovieMaker blog at http://chaptermoviemaker.blogspot.com/. If you’d like more information, or have a film you’d like to show, please get in touch. Ideally submissions should be on DVD.

========================

Right, this is pretty straightforward.  Flux=Rad promoter, Radio 1 DJ and full-time 24-hour enthusiasm machine Jen Long has organised this gig to raise funds for the Red Cross’ aid effort in response to the devastating events in Japan last month.  Clwb have done their bit by waiving the hire fee and every penny taken at the gig will go to charity.  That ought to be enough to get you along to this one, but just in case it’s not there’s a tip top line-up of noisy pop fun and a bunch of other stuff to boot.

KUTOSIS headline, bringing their massively fun indie-punk-powerpop nuggets and impeccable tailoring; Jen and ex-Automatic man James Frost’s EFFORT are sloppy, grungy pop with a rictus grin; sandwiched inbetween, you should definitely check magnificently named Glaswegians GOLDEN GRRRLS, two girls and a boy toting an excellently shambling fuzzed-up indiepop noise on their debut 7″ for the Night School label.  Night School have also helmed a compilation cassette and download benefitting the Red Cross appeal and featuring Golden Grrls alongside Trash Kit, Divorce, Shitty Limits, Peepholes, Girls Names, Becoming Real and many more; it’s clearly both an utter bargain and an excellent thing to have done.  Buy it here, or here, or at the gig.  Stuff your face with cake, chance your arm on some fine raffle prizes, dig three excellent bands and leave knowing you’ve done a good thing.  No-brainer, dude.

Flux=Rad Japan Benefit Show
KUTOSIS
GOLDEN GRRRLS
EFFORT
Plus raffle, cakes, compilation CD sales and more!

Wednesday 27th April
Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff / 7.30pm – 10.30pm
£DONATION ON DOOR – ALL PROCEEDS TO THE RED CROSS BENEFIT FOR JAPAN

http://www.kutosis.co.uk

http://www.myspace.com/goldengrrrls

http://www.night-school.org.uk

http://www.redcross.org.uk/JapanTsunami

Hello everyone. I don’t think I need to write anything here about the terrible disaster in Japan, or try and elicit any kind of emotion in you to realise how awful it must be. So instead, let’s all get together and raise some money. We’re throwing a party at Clwb. They’ve given us the venue and flux=rad will cover the band costs so ALL MONEYS YOU DONATE AT THIS SHOW WILL GO TO THE RED CROSS. A lot of people are getting involved in this… Cardiff Craft will be giving origami lessons for donation. There will be another awesome flux=rad compilation CD available for a small donation. There will be a bake sale. There will be a raffle with prizes including SWN 2011 wristbands, Spillers goodies, Buffalo gig tickets, Music Box rehearsals, Barely Regal swag, and more… Playing… KUTOSIS Ace Cardiff punk trio who’ve just finished recording a stellar debut album. GOLDEN GRRRLS Glaswegian fuzzed out trio favoured by the likes of Pinglewood playing their first Welsh show. EFFORT Cardiff pop duo playing their first show of the year. **This is an early show with headliners on around 9.30pm** Please come down, get involved and help raise some cash. Should be a good night. flux=rad xx

You can’t see Cardiff from space. All this is is one set in one gig in one venue on a Sunday night when the football’s on. Such is the power of small and perfect ideas though this one set cut to the centre of my stupid psyche and made me way giddier than these old bones should theoretically get. It’s The School! Playing Ramones covers! If you don’t understand it, I can’t explain it. Maybe it’s zen. Terminally boring reasons mean half the bands are over before I get there; the rest fly past my dull face at lightspeed. Goodbye Pagan Wanderer Lu, a blur of genuine intelligence and ace mangle guitar and electronics. See you later Kutosis, riotous doublequick garage greatness and fine company for alleyway World Cup viewing. And there goes Gindrinker, still Cardiff’s finest bilious observational screed merchants. One two three four.

(Should point out here I’m trampling over a charity alldayer organised by and filled with properly decent people. Over £300 raised for Headway. Even the lucky dip was exemplary.)

Course, the Ramones is a pretty logical choice for a Stars In Their Eyes moment in this case. Jonny and the boys always were in thrall to girl group perfection and gold standard pop streamlining; The School’s classic shimmying rests on songwriting so melodically strong that no amount of restyling can worry it. So it’s ‘Rock And Roll High School’ to start with, and half an hour of gently partying brilliance. ‘Sheena Is A Punk Rocker’ and ‘Judy Is A Punk’ tumble past, Liz dropping down the vocal register and somehow getting all the words out while those three chords chug playfully around her. ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend’ coasts and yearns like a heartbreak. These covers get dosed by the School’s inbuilt vulnerability, hugged into sweet new shapes. It runs both ways too – School originals get a drum thump and extra layers of guitar fuzz: ‘All I Wanna Do’ is particularly zippy, all doublespeed guitar lines and toy-like bounce. The mixture of coolness and inclusive partydown, best illustrated by a string section mostly on handclaps and sass, is weirdly cheering: by the time ‘Baby, I Love You’s lap of honour struts out it’s clear how much pleasure can be wrung from simple things. A highlight of the year. Start a polite letter writing campaign to get them to do it again.

Sunday, 11th July 2010

Charity indie alldayer fundraiser for Headway Cardiff

The School (Ramones-style Set!) / Gindrinker / Kutosis / John Mouse / Pagan Wanderer Lu / Houdini Dax / Lucky Delucci / Last Partisan / Ivan Moult

An indie all dayer with South Wales’s best bands in attendance, all for raising money for Headway Cardiff.

4:00pm | £5/£6 | buy tickets

• www.headwaycardiff.org
• www.myspace.com/gindrinker
• www.myspace.com/kutosis
• www.myspace.com/johnmousemusic

More heart-shaped fun for you cynical scumbags here. I guess the Loves are sort of obligated to play this day; maybe they should change their name to the Ghouls for October, or Feelings Of Familial Unease for Christmas time. Hope David Quantick turns up. Anyway, this is all for a fiver you buggers. Show some, er, love.

VALENTINE ALLDAYER – Sun 14th Feb @ Buffalo Bar

In no particular order:

Nerd alert! The between bands CD is the same as the recent Fuwch Goch music quiz Guess The Sample round. The way things go, it looks like Kutosis have specifically asked for Abba’s ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’ as their intro tape. Who can blame them, eh lads? Whether all this helps them pummel their instruments so much is unknown but Kutosis’s first couple of songs have undeniable bellyfire: fairly scorched and ragged scuzz garage with random smears of call and response vocals. It’s an energy that dissipates slowly throughout the set, tunes getting smoother and more conventionally rocking. Between the Jay Reatard dedication and the realisation the bassist has a really fucking good side parting though they had something, and there’s no reason to think it won’t flare again.

One wag mentions the Cavern Club, one suggests ‘Gimme Some Money’ by Spinal Tap. Begone wags! If Thee Vicars win any retro competition going, they also mainline history properly, fired up and banging on the edges of their time capsule rock. Old clips of the Sonics you might have seen crossbreed with early Kinks – less Merseybeat than jokers may claim, more proto garage played with mad eyes and a carrot up its bum. Bowl haircuts unleash ‘waaargh’s rather than Scouse ‘wooo’s. My hunch is Thee Vicars retro zeal is more a monomaniacal obsession for the genre rather than the past in general, in common with Y Niwl’s equally great surf freakery. Zero variation, endless jittery thrills, three guitarists in the crowd. I must be in love (not by the Rutles).

Barfly presents

Thee Vicars

+ Kutosis + Hyener

Buy Tickets

Age: +18

]]> http://www.thejoycollective.co.uk/blog/preview/thee-vicars-kutosis-hyener-16-01-10/feed/ 1 http://www.thejoycollective.co.uk/blog/review/sic-alps-wonderswan-kutosis-buffalo-bar-cardiff-15-10-09/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sic-alps-wonderswan-kutosis-buffalo-bar-cardiff-15-10-09 http://www.thejoycollective.co.uk/blog/review/sic-alps-wonderswan-kutosis-buffalo-bar-cardiff-15-10-09/#comments Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:05:26 +0000 keef http://www.thejoycollective.co.uk/blog/?p=3672

I’m wary of starting a review of a fairly well-attended gig, headlined by a band who few present will have heard much of beforehand, with a moan. But hey, it’s never stopped me before. People! If you’ve come out early and paid your fiver for three bands, why disappear completely before 9.00? You might miss something you’d love! I mean, enduring mediocrity for the sake of it is daft, but at least give the rest of the bill a chance. Ah well.

Anyway, praise is due for Kutosis‘ approach to this midweek jaunt; first-on local bands can get a raw deal, but not with Loose, and when you sense a band hasn’t bothered promoting their own gig it’s a bit disheartening. Kutosis, though, have enthusiastically badgered dozens of people to come out early in support. Good form, and the band play a blinder in their first Cardiff gig since playing Reading and Leeds festivals. Their former eyes-front ramalama style has been changed up a little, Ian starting off guitarless and revelling in some light posing, and the songs themselves have more toughness, tricks and turns these days. Snappy, catchy punk-pop recalling Mo-Ho-Bish-O-Pi with a dash of Jarcrew noise thrown in.

Wonderswan are a very late-decade affair; one of a bunch of young UK bands who ape, often note-for-note, the best and brightest of US early 90s slacker-pop and coat it with a layer of crunch and dynamics that those originals shied away from. After a red-herring opening instrumental more muscular and Mudhoney-heavy than anything that follows, they turn into a faithful Pavement tribute. The two guitarists settle into that studied, floppy-limbed slacker template, the vocalist pitches his mid-Atlantic mumble just so and the guitar lines ape Slanted & Enchanted to a tee. It’s not a bad thing, just not one you feel they should stick too slavishly to without developing. Early days though, and they are entertaining for all that; the bassist has bizarrely opted to play offstage, and he spends the set strafing imaginary foes with the neck of his bass. The drummer looks like a Halloween pumpkin carved into the shape of Mark Arm.

“Lo-fi pedigree”. Oxymoronic, maybe, or just plain moronic. Sic Alps bring it, though; a San Francisco indie label owner and an ex-member of Coachwhips, and their recorded output has fuzzed-up tunes and tape-splicing experiments in equal measure. They’re joined here, though, by Comets On Fire man Noel von Harmonson, and that’s a big clue to their hugely appealing live sound. The splintered, two-minute noise-pop tunes owe as much to Nuggets-era West Coast psychedelia as anything else, and the convergance of the two and the easy likeability they give off in playing it are hugely infectious. It’s a nifty lesson in how to present a largely unknown touring band, giving the more ho-hum moments from those albums the elbow and not only keeping the remaining punters interested but winning plenty of converts.  See?  They just needed a bit of patience, people.