Sweetness and noise, light and dark, soul and body. KICK are back with the new album Light Figures, out today March 16th, 2022 via Anomic Records (Germany), Dischi Sotterranei (Italy) and Sour Grapes (United Kingdom) on all digital platforms, available for pre-order on vinyl and cassette.
KICK are Chiara Amalia Bernardini (vocals, bass) and Nicola Mora (guitars, electric piano, synths, samplers), from Brescia. Their sound combines rough elements and others more dreamy in a sound that could ideally be defined “sweet noise“, a style on their own melting the noise with the softness of the atmosphere, without any limits of genre.
The production of Light Figures, composed between 2019 and 2020, was curated together with Marco Fasolo (Jennifer Gentle, I Hate My Village), known for the international reach of his works.
Light Figures shows “deviant” melodies and often obsessive rhythms, representing a natural change of direction compared to what was previously released by the Italian duo (the debut album Mothers of 2016 and the EP Post-Truth of 2018): the sound become less electronic and at the same time more analogue, minimal and heavy. It’s an approach that reflects a heterogeneous background, able to move from the hypnosis of trip hop to the New York no-wave, up to stoner and desert rock.
Light Figures is a record made up of complementary opposites. “This album wants to enhance the ‘bruises’ of the soul, the ‘dark side’ that characterizes each of us, and that we often try to repress because we are afraid of it. Communicating with our dark side is necessary. Once in a while we have to go out and have a glass of wine with our dark side. Our sunny and darker sides are closely connected, and make sense of each other“.
The first single Setting Tina sees as a guest on bass Scott Reeder, longtime member of Kyuss and currently of Fireball Ministry. Marked by a compelling groove, Setting Tina is a peculiar interpretation of the language of populist propaganda, which aims at people’s anger and frustration to manipulate and “set” them as if were machines to be exploited. The name Tina was inspired by the famous Thatcherian slogan “There is no alternative”, with which the former British prime minister declared neo-liberalism as the only possible model of life. Times have changed, but the sense of inevitability unfortunately is still here: we feel victims and mere tools of a sick system that is leading us to collapse. Sirens Never Sleep, following a crooked post-punk footstep, increases its magnetic aura of mystery with lyrics sung partly in an unknown language: “Sirens Never Sleep is a light-hearted song, an ironic dedication to the sirens who deceive us with their singing, leading us to crash into the rocks“. The imperious and ambivalent Rubberlover goes well with lyrics that investigate a cross-section of BDSM practice. “We are fascinated by exploring the dynamics of power versus submission established between two consenting adults, and by how, in the narrating voice, requests for submission coexist with more typical requests for amorous sweetness“.The new single Viole is the first song ever written and published in Italian by KICK. The bucolic theme and the dreamlike dimension of the lyrics are combined with slow, lulling and psychedelic sounds. The song features Beppe Scardino (C’mon Tigre, Calibro 35) on winds and Fasolo on the guitar in the final coda.
Bernardini’s lyrics, for the first time not only in English but in fact in some tracks also in Italian (listen to the irresistible swing of mood and languages of a track like Benvegnuda), focus both on the recurring theme of love and on social issues. In the first case, we go from the BDSM dynamics of Rubberlover to the connection between two souls in the fizzy Sparks and the consolidated relationship told in the pastoral ballad Eleven. In addition to Setting Tina, on the second case we have the frenetic 24-Hour Delivery Club, in reference to the “false needs” generated by an increasingly materialistic society, and the final Atlantide, against the climate change and its probably apocalyptic consequences.
Very active also live, both in Italy and abroad, KICK chose a symbolic photo by Marco Pietracupa as cover image. “The shot depicts an androgynous, almost angelic model. Behind her, there is a natural and heavenly world that opens up. However, there is something in her look and her nakedness, referring to a corporeal and earthly dimension, which would find no space in Paradise as we know it. She is a complex creature, whose ambiguity represents the overcoming of the soul/body dichotomy and therefore fits perfectly to the concept of Light Figures“.
