red kite associates.

red kite will be back in 2013 with the album release, but until then, get down to king jim's bandcamp site and get a load of the two free albums he's letting you all have:

http://kingjim.bandcamp.com/album/the-great-play

http://kingjim.bandcamp.com/album/oh-great-captain

he's our guitarist and a genuine country troubadour, and his lilting country ballads are the perfect antidote to all theose festive hangovers.

also out is the new album by an escape plan, featuring red kite multi-instrumentalist nick willes, as well as ex medium 21 member and longtime friend arge brown. this album is special, and something of a sister album to the red kite album out next year. treat yourselves:

http://www.anescapeplan.co.uk/aepshop/

we'll be back soon with exciting news on red kite in 2013.

enjoy the rest of 2012; next year's going to be a belter.

needle in the hay acoustic suzy radio

needle in the hay acoustic suzy radio

calliope acoustic suzy radio

calliope acoustic suzy radio

montreal acoustic suzy radio

montreal acoustic suzy radio

a busy week

and so ends a busy week for red kite.

sunday saw a return to london's live fold with a terrific show at camden proud, the first london show to feature the full-on two drummer assault. we are now frighteningly loud, and all the better for it. in-house sound engineers hate us. i consider us 'a challenge'.

the album is now finished. it's a strange feeling to have now finished something that two years ago began as something to do with a week off round tom's house. i never even imagined i'd play anything live at that time, let alone actually finish an entire album, but here it finally is. tom's contribution really cannot be expressed enough, without his dedication and at times needfully stern guiding hand, there is no way this would have happened. the man is a god.

now on to putting the plan together for getting it released. we're currently looking into putting together a video for some of the darker tracks (does anyone actually release singles these days?), which pleases me greatly. i shall hold off revealing too much about the track listing for now, you'll just have to stay tuned (leaving your email over on the left will help with that).

as if that wasn't enough to be getting on with, on thursday we went into the brilliant ilkatron studios to do our session for the lofi dogma project. i've posted the manifesto up here before, but if you think of the similarly monikered danish film movement then you won't go too far wrong. needless to say, we made a ferocious racket and caused ben our lovely recording engineer no end of headaches. thanks a lot to marc and daniel for organising the event and looking after us all day. lovely, lovely folk indeed. and swiss, too. great accents.

here are some photos:

the one of paul and jon cracks me up.

the track we recorded will go live at the lofi dogma site in january, along with photos and an interview in which i'm quite stoned. obviously we'll keep you updated here.

next up is friday 26th with the murder barn at rattlesnake angel, so get down there and let's all have a pop show.

dance with crow

as promised, here's the new track:

dance with crow

we've been playing it live for a while now, but thought we'd let you have a proper listen. we'll be taking it down after the show on sunday, so make the most of it. feel free to give it a share and all that gumpf people do with music. maybe someone will listen to it and think it's good. that would be awesome.

don't forget we're on at proud camden this sunday, doors open at 7, we're onstage around 10. support comes from emperor yes and lonesound. it's free entry, so event the skint ones can come. 

image from 'the love you taught me' by lyndsay martin

new track, photos, news and stuff

who wants to hear a new red kite track?

well, you're in luck. red kite are heading out into the musical wilderness to play some alt-rock concerts, and to celebrate the fact we will be posting a new track up on the website here for a limited time only. 

at midday on friday 12th october, we will post a link here for you to get your lugholes on a new track which will be available to stream until after we finish our show on sunday at proud camden (free entry, so no excuses not to show up).

aren't we nice.

the following thursday we'll be heading into the studio to take part in the lofi dogma project. anyone who has seen us live may be familiar with the track calliope, which we'll be re-working to fit the brief for the project. at the current time of going to press, we have no idea what it will sound like. all we know is it will rather rough and ready, and all the sexier for it.

finishing off our autumnal burst of activity, we'll be playing new venue rattlesnake in angel with the glorious the murder barn in celebration of their e.p. launch, and a royally rambunctious ruckus it will prove to be. 

photoshoots are a strange beast. my usual brief of 'try and capture how much i hate having my picture taken, and don't try and make us look cool' can be a tricky one to adhere to. as such, when he decamped to the technicolour hive of artistic activity that is the manor house warehouse complex, we simply said to crack photographer sam folan 'we'll just dick about and you shoot'. the fact that jim rolled up two hours late stinking of booze meant that we had to fire it off in record time, but the results were nonetheless extremely pleasing. we hope you agree.

the album's nearly done.

tom's computer blew up, but now it is fine.

check back here for the latest news and gossip like heat but not poor sentence to end on oh well bye

red kite live news

red kite hit the road (note tourbus pic, above)


red kite are going to be playing in a town near you. well, if you live in reading or london, anyway.

the dates are as follows:

sunday 14th october - proud gelleries, camden
friday 26th october - rattlesnake, angel
saturday 3rd november - the abbott cook, reading

ticket links and other information to follow soon, so stay tuned to the site.

for now, here's the faceplant link for the london show at proud:

https://www.facebook.com/events/115248848626432

and the show with The Murder Barn:

https://www.facebook.com/events/345258125563857/

in other news, the album continues at a healthy trot, with red blooded males now in the bag (my good god, that track is an unholy racket). chris ware's building stories is out at the start of october, just in time for my birthday. nothing eases the passing of the years quite like a beautifully illustrated box-set chronicling an entire building's despair and self-loathing. i am giddy with anticipation.


here's today's achewood coming at you, getting mad rutty:

streetlights

streetlights in the mix today. this is abbie's favourite. abbie is a girl i know.

space guitar. dusty old piano chords. synthesisers. sounds like medium 21, the greatest british band that nobody (criminally) bothered to get around to listening to.

in other news, i got down to reading rocks radio for a cheeky little acoustic session with the lovely wes and jo. played montreal, saddle up son, calliope and a sneaky little cover. i'll try and get you a video soon.

lo-fi dogma project

featured below is the manifesto for the lo-fi dogma project, a swiss music project which has invited red kite to contribute to its london experiment.

lo-fi dogma is 'a recording manifesto for technical reduction in the production in the recording of music that dedicates itself to a style of recording that prioritise risk, immediacy and authenticity over certainty, cleanliness and hesitation'. all values very close to red kite's heart. it is a non-commercial project initiated by sound-development, a swiss private cultural patron institution.

we're pencilled in to record in october, so keep tabs here for more information and a heads up on where to hear the results.

more on the project (and some of the previous recordings) can be found at the website here.

it's going to be an alt-rock blast.

LofiDogma Project Description Engl Project-2

new notebook

essentially, i've been filling these notebooks with exactly the same thing since the age of fifteen.

       

calliope in the mix

when you mix an album, there is always one problem track. one track that, no matter how much you push and pull it around, seems intent on escaping you and wriggling its way out of your increasingly frustrated grip. you know it's capable of greatness, and as such you refuse to let it go quietly into the night, no matter how much it seems to want to. it's almost as though the thing just doesn't want to be heard, as though the mere fact that it had once existed is enough for it and we should simply leave it at that, thankful that we had once had the chance to bask in its conceptual greatness, its figurative grace.

calliope is that track. rather fittingly, calliope was the greek muse of the epic poets, the inspiration for the odyssey and lover of Ares, the god of war. too much symbolism to take in, there.

but we're gonna nail it today. we're going to pin it down and make it our bitch and not accept its pitiful cries for release. today we will emerge the victors.

(replace all the 'it's in that last paragraph with 'her's as i eventually decided to do, and you will see why i made said editorial decision. sounded all hella kindsa wrong.)

album is getting really close now. getting all giddy with glee.

hope this track doesn't break us.

red kite artist lyndsay martin - work in progress

always nice to see.

she also takes the nice pretty pictures i use in the blog posts and new website ads.

which, incidentally and for posterity, can be viewed here:

going for the treble

today's overly ambitious mix session includes poltergeist (pop gem), dance with crow (funeral march) and saddle up son (cowboy ballad).

three in a day.

we will not achieve this.

opened proceedings with a fry up on the roof.

all days should begin this way.

this is cerebus (that is not a misspelling)

this is cerebus.

for those of you who do not know who cerebus is, here is a brief summary:

cerebus is an aardvark. he is also the central character of the comic book series which bears his name, and which ran for 300 issues over roughly 25 years and was collected in 16 volumes (affectionately nicknamed ‘phonebooks’) which greedily inhabit a solid foot and a half of shelf space.

cerebus was written by dave sim and it occupies a particularly peculiar place in comic book history. it is one of the greatest achievements of the art-form, combining literary pastiche, satire, philosophical treatise, belly-busting humour and exquisite, groundbreaking draughtsmanship (aided by gerhard’s background artwork which began to appear part of the way through the church and state storyline). 

it was also completely mental. sim struggled with an assortment of mental conditions and over the course of the comic’s run developed some rather reprehensible views on women, homosexuality, politics and religion, not to mention taking in the odd divorce and drug-induced bouts of paranoia and megalomania. 

and all of it made it into the book.

and yet, despite all of that, i still think it is brilliant. 

i won’t delve any deeper other than to suggest that anyone with any interest in the subject should check out tim kreider’s excellent essay in the comics journal 301 (this article, partially reproduced here, hits the proverbial nail precisely on the head), as well as tim callahan’s articles here and here, and douglas wolk’s piece in the believer for mcsweeneys. if you think it sounds interesting then start saving and, yes, do read it from the beginning (that sense of duty to the work will stand you in good stead for future issues).

only here’s the thing: i never finished it.

nope. 

i got all the way to the final volume, the last day, number 16 of 16 and... i couldn’t do it. part of it was no doubt the fact that, like much of the later volumes, it contained page after unforgiving page of barely decipherable text that i knew, again from my experience of recent volumes, was going to be largely bat-shit, box-of-frogs lunacy with smatterings of unquestionable genius. but the main reason was that i just couldn’t let the little fella go. i knew how it was going to end (and it is telegraphed early on in the series, arguably rendering its actual taking place twenty years later even more remarkable), but i just couldn’t bring myself to do it, to draw that curtain on something that had become something of an obsession for me; some of those volumes were extremely rare and had cost me far more than i should have reasonably allowed myself to pay to get hold of.

that was about 4 years ago. today i pulled it off the shelf, far more tattered and worn than any of the other volumes (i carried it around in my bag like an a4 albatross for many months, intending to get going on it as soon as i finished whatever i was reading at the time). i’ve just read dave’s introduction and he assures me he has stumbled upon a unifying theory of everything and that it lies within these beautifully drawn 250 pages, and that the only reason the scientific community has not bowed down to him in worship is that he is an anti-feminist comic book artist, shunned and exiled by nearly everybody in his field for his views.

the scary thing is that i think he means every word.

deep breath....

monster's here. and it is loud.

inspiration

going to scrap lyrics to entire album and (w)rap it up roast beef style.

hella yeah.

red kite album in the mix

todays track: new song poltergeist.

laura's coming down to do some vocals. it will get loud.

i'm reading achewood, tom's working like a dog, business as usual.

will try and book some shows today. it's been too long.

the site hasn't gone live yet, so none of you can actually read this yet. i've said 'none of you' as though there are untold legions poring over my every syllable.

never stop dreaming.



you showed me i had a way to go
before i could call you my ghost
you threw plates and rattled the corridors
blew the lights and howled at the moon
but i know i'll be okay

the spanish courtyard in progress

tom does all the hard work

essentially tom does all the hard work whilst i read old achewood strips and chip in every half hour with vague statements such as "make the drums more expansive" and "increase the dynamism".

phillipe is such a hoot.

red kite in the mix

today's mix: spanish courtyard.
a song about childhood, death and running guns on the high seas.
apparently the bassline sounds like the smiths.

the rise and fall of facebook

my facebook gripes, summed up neatly by emily gonneau, manager of ok go.

http://blog.midem.com/2012/08/emily-gonneau-beware-facebook-youre-on-a-very-slippery-slope/#.UB-FvzXplrY.facebook

mixing in the studio

mixing the album in tom's manor house laboratory. 

today's track - money up front.

stay tuned for updates on the album's progress. should have it finished by september.

may even be dishing out sneaky previews.

come back soon and find out.

how the magic happens, featuring laura hegarty

why are you here?

why are you here?

probably because you’ve followed a link from either facebook or twitter, though perhaps you happened upon this site of your own accord.

why is this site here?

in short, because facebook is infuriating. for no doubt dark and sinister reasons, facebook has decided that simply liking a band and wanting to hear news and updates about said outfit is not enough. that band then has to pay to advertise its presence or face the mute indifference of silence as its posts are kept hidden from anyone who may have once shown an interest. 

facebook was never perfect.  aesthetically, it was always difficult to escape that blue and white uniformity, and half of the time it just plain didn’t seem to work. but at least you knew that pretty much everyone used it and that it seemed to do its job of keeping followers informed of a band’s comings and goings, gigs and releases. then all of a sudden that seemed to stop. people weren’t hearing anything and as such had ceased posting and reacting. the only thing that made facebook seem worth using was no more.

the biggest problem, however, had always been the question of how to get people coming back to the site regularly. where was the incentive? what could be done with the limited format that was facebook and its post-react-shove a funny picture of a science-spouting cat methodology?

how could you make it your own?

well, people have been doing this for years with blogs. however, we hadn’t.  

some people are good at blogging. sean at drowned in sound is very good at it.

i am not. between making music, writing and reading books and comics, i have neither the time nor the inclination. in order to do a blog worth reading, one has to be very, very good at it. one has to enjoy it and take to it naturally. not being this type of person has always been my reason for avoiding the platform.

it can, however, have its uses. in the absence of the technical expertise and financial capabilities needed to actually run a website, a blog can serve as the next best thing.

this is not a website.

it’s not a blog.

what it is is a glimpse into the world of red kite. give it time to grow and we’ll see where it can take us.

all news and updates, as well as pictures, exclusives and new material, will be announced through this site. we’ll still use facebook and twitter, but mainly to direct people here. if you’ve managed to find it, then feel free to spread the word.

take a little trip around. in the links, you’ll find some of the stuff we like. in the failures section you’ll come to realise why i am a musician and not a writer. none of the stories are any good, but they come from the same place as the songs so perhaps they may be of some interest. perhaps not.

either way, we hope you enjoy it. we hope you come back. we hope you comment and get involved and get to know one another a little. 

leave your email over on the left and we'll even keep you up to date whenever something gets posted. no spam, we promise, just wholesome red kite goodness.

and if you like it enough to put something up on facebook, well then that’s fine too.

much love,

rk

milton in the wood

another short story, based on a true one.
dark and disturbing, it reportedly gave kieran mahon the heebie-jeebies.
an accompanying ditty can be found here in a red kite multi-media cross-platform exclusive just for you guys:

milton in the wood [soundcloud]


Milton in the Wood

seahorses

an early short story. be good to it, it's only little.


Seahorses

childish renderings

absolutely positively not art.

i cannot draw. however, there is a childish joy in tracing that appeals to the cheat in me.

give it a go.