Kiss the fist return on Sat 10 March. Baby bathhouse, Church St.
Pon di group: http://www.facebook.com/events/305705669484638/
Saturday, 25 February 2012
Friday, 24 February 2012
Radio show
In-keeping with the current house revival, KTF launch into 2012 with the HOT TOPIC of house prices in South London. Special guest this time is the Don, while regulars Janek Jakzo, Jimpotent and the Dominator harp on about words with Greek and Latin roots and sad elephants. The big question: does ASDA have any plans for an in-town version of its popular supermarket, and if so, what will it be branded as? Music from Lusty Zanzibar, Kid Creole, Todd Terje and Exile. Follow the link to soundcloud
Kiss the Fist radio Feb 2012 by ktf
Tuesday, 21 February 2012
Skrillex interview!
Skrillex: lord of the dance
Skrillex is the hottest name in dance music, with records all over the charts and a bulging awards cabinet. While he was over playing gigs in London last week, we somehow managed to get his record company to agree to a telephone interview. Here it is:
KTF: So, thanks for talking to us, how does it feel to be recognised with three Grammies?
Skrillex: Well, you know, I feel it’s just a kind of like, mark of respect for what I’ve done with music and, more importantly, sounds. Sounds and drops. Before me, no one cared about drops and now they’re like whoah, where’s the drop? If I had to dedicate my awards to anything, it would be to drops. Drops and my mom.
KTF: Does your mom come to your gigs? What does she think of your music?
Skrillex: Fuck yeah. I mean I discovered I was adopted when I was 16. But not only that, I found out that everyone – my parents' friends, my own friends, my friends' parents, everyone – had known except me. I thank her for it now though, because that’s what got me into being an emo and without that I wouldn’t have been exposed to metal, hardcore, haircuts and the other things that inspire me. My mom loves drops more than she loves me I think. Ha ha, joking mom.
KTF: You’re famously hard working, how do you manage to tour and record, when you’re not picking up awards?
Skrillex: In a word: meth. I mean I’m not part of this decadent LA party scene or anything, it’s just that meth helps me work. You know the killer drop on “First of the Year (Equinox)"? I got that from being on meth, it kinda slows shit down. Then speeds it up. I don’t care what people think because I know my fans respect me for my drops and that’s what matters.
KTF: Your fans tend to be knowledgeable and after a groove, why is that?
Skrillex: Emos and fraternities appreciate diversity. They don’t like to conform to the social mores of their respective groups. That’s why they appreciate my sounds, and especially my hair. I played a series of shows at the Pepsi Cola-Blackberry-Nikon Coolpix-Frat Festival in Orange County and people were going berserk. I gave them drops and, as they moshed, they gave me love. A frat boy with glow sticks in his mouth got on stage with a keg, sprayed the crowd and dropped his pants. That’s when I realised I was part of a radical new subculture. It inspired me to keep doing what I do.
KTF: Is it hard balancing your growing fame with the musical credibility that made you?
Skrillex: Not really. I’ve been with my entourage, team-lex, and we’re in this totally swag suite at the Chateaux Marmont drinking Crystal with all these hot emo babes, but we’re still totally into the music. I’m there making beats, by beats I mean drops, the whole time on my laptop. People think I’m a nerd but that’s just me. Money and fame are nice, but for me it will always be about the crayest drops. And meth.
KTF: What do you say to the haters?
Skrillex: Take a Skrill Pill and talk to my PA's PA, dude.
KTF: Thanks Skrillex.
Skrillex: Thanks yo.
Tuesday, 10 January 2012
New year; new fear
2012. What can we say? We're still hear and we've got the fear. January is usually the bleakest of months: dark and long, with only a selection of underwhelming Christmas books and weight loss programming on TV to get you through it.
So, while we watch fat people crying on Channel Five, KTF are going to get cracking on turning things around. More talk; more action. More blogging; more smoking. It's time to look on the bright side. I mean, look at Craig David, he looks fucking weird. The answers don't lie in muscles and they never have. They lie in a series of relatively poorly realised podcasts and a better defined 'KTF brand.'
The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers."
Expect more from KTF as 2012 rolls on. A new podcast soon too, and a radio play for London Fields Radio based on the life of celebrated polemicist Christopher Hitchens titled Iconoclast's Whimsy.
In the meantime, here's a blog post from one of our number that got recognition and big ups from disco genius and new member of the KTF family, Nile Rodgers.
Here are some austere mixes that will work well on a January night bus ride.
And here are one, two, three of our fave songs of last year. And here are one, two, three of our fave songs we played last year but are from a different year altogether.
I want muscles
Friday, 11 November 2011
Bibbleotheque
As a multimedia organisation, KTF simply will not be pigeon holed. We don’t just touch peoples' hearts and souls through the medium of ambient, ephemeral soundscapes and streams of blog based profundity, but through all of the visual arts as well.
As such, we are proud to be launching our latest collaborative exhibition at the Noncehouse Gallery, Shoreditch. Bibbleotheque is a multi media experience conceived as a response to the painting Tea Party by Beryl Cook. Bibbleotheque is an exploration of the void.
“Bibbleotheque is boundless, intoxicating, everything ephemeral, fleeting, blurry, warm, seductive. It passes before you know you’re in it. Being there is euphoric but dangerous, beautiful yet treacherous, dark and cryptic. It is occluded by grey area, lust and living … It is the obstruction of references to the concrete, grounded, physical world. Everything is questionable, nothing definite.”
At the heart of Bibbleotheque are a series of studies captured using phones, sketches and clay models, all ideal mediums to capture spontaneity. These images will be projected on to the performance piece at the centre of the void where different protagonists will recreate the scene from Tea Party using only waste reclaimed from bins. The study hopes to redefine man’s relationship with the built environment.
At the same time, Def Stef will play music and abstract soundscapes from the oeuvre of Andy Spazchrist along with other new compositions.
KTF has also commissioned Carolina Pizza to create a one off incense candle to provide a scent for the exhibition and add to the immersive nature of the experience.
The exhibition will run until Jan 31st at the Noncehouse having been shown already in Lodz and Toronto.
As such, we are proud to be launching our latest collaborative exhibition at the Noncehouse Gallery, Shoreditch. Bibbleotheque is a multi media experience conceived as a response to the painting Tea Party by Beryl Cook. Bibbleotheque is an exploration of the void.
“Bibbleotheque is boundless, intoxicating, everything ephemeral, fleeting, blurry, warm, seductive. It passes before you know you’re in it. Being there is euphoric but dangerous, beautiful yet treacherous, dark and cryptic. It is occluded by grey area, lust and living … It is the obstruction of references to the concrete, grounded, physical world. Everything is questionable, nothing definite.”
At the heart of Bibbleotheque are a series of studies captured using phones, sketches and clay models, all ideal mediums to capture spontaneity. These images will be projected on to the performance piece at the centre of the void where different protagonists will recreate the scene from Tea Party using only waste reclaimed from bins. The study hopes to redefine man’s relationship with the built environment.
At the same time, Def Stef will play music and abstract soundscapes from the oeuvre of Andy Spazchrist along with other new compositions.
KTF has also commissioned Carolina Pizza to create a one off incense candle to provide a scent for the exhibition and add to the immersive nature of the experience.
The exhibition will run until Jan 31st at the Noncehouse having been shown already in Lodz and Toronto.
Wednesday, 21 September 2011
Smashmouth
In his latest book, Retromania, Simon Reynolds examines pop culture’s obsession with its own recent past. Everything from revivals of revivals to the fetishisation of retro fashion, band reformations and (most importantly) the internet as an infinite historical library of recent popular culture, has a calcifying affect on the present. It’s too easy to find in an instant on YouTube, any rare song or video to the point where everything is now both referenced and referential, stifling pop’s ability to do anything fresh or original.
"History must have a dustbin, or history will be a dustbin, a gigantic, sprawling garbage heap."
Just as the V&A launches a new exhibition on Postmodernism, have we now reached a point where pop has finally eaten itself, and pop culture has become a snake slowly swallowing its own tail until it consumes its own bloated and confused head?
This all vividly fell into place for me a couple of weeks ago after ending up in East London’s hippest club The Alibi. Or at least it’s supposed to be East London’s hippest club. It was certainly full of dead-eyed, student age, hyper-fashionistas out to be seen; accept they’d come to a night where the music was entirely late 90s/early 00s skate rock. Greenday, Offspring, Len, Smashmouth, Good Charlotte etc, you know, the kind of shit that was big but effectively washed away here by the garage and post punk revival.
These sounds transported me back to my own recent past, when I was the student. Through its unavoidability at the time I knew all the songs and lots of the words but would never, ever, think to put any of it on myself now. Everyone around me looked the same age as I was back then, like a First World War Tommy remembering his dead friends as 19 year olds, amplifying the nostalgic effect. It was disconcerting for me, sure, but it seemed to highlight perfectly the speeding up of the revival process. Eventually there’ll be revivals of scenes that were big last week, then yesterday, until pop collapses in on itself like black hole.
Simon Reynolds is right. While pop has always been derivative and nostalgic, it has also spawned genuinely new movements that eschewed the past like post punk, hip hop and rave. The likes of which we’ll never see again. Thing is, while splintered scenes and the ubiquity of the past on iPods and the internet makes being original more difficult, didn’t we already know this? Even if something genuinely real and new came along I’d be too old to enjoy it properly anyway. The fact that it almost certainly won’t happen, is in many ways, a relief to me. That is why me and the rest of KTF can relax and happily mine, from the comfort of our laptops, the last 40 years of pop for gems and rarities and bring them to the party knowing that not only will it be good, but better than most new shit and definitely better than early 00s skate rock.
The next KTF will be at The Baby Bathhouse, Church St, on 30th September.
"History must have a dustbin, or history will be a dustbin, a gigantic, sprawling garbage heap."
Just as the V&A launches a new exhibition on Postmodernism, have we now reached a point where pop has finally eaten itself, and pop culture has become a snake slowly swallowing its own tail until it consumes its own bloated and confused head?
This all vividly fell into place for me a couple of weeks ago after ending up in East London’s hippest club The Alibi. Or at least it’s supposed to be East London’s hippest club. It was certainly full of dead-eyed, student age, hyper-fashionistas out to be seen; accept they’d come to a night where the music was entirely late 90s/early 00s skate rock. Greenday, Offspring, Len, Smashmouth, Good Charlotte etc, you know, the kind of shit that was big but effectively washed away here by the garage and post punk revival.
These sounds transported me back to my own recent past, when I was the student. Through its unavoidability at the time I knew all the songs and lots of the words but would never, ever, think to put any of it on myself now. Everyone around me looked the same age as I was back then, like a First World War Tommy remembering his dead friends as 19 year olds, amplifying the nostalgic effect. It was disconcerting for me, sure, but it seemed to highlight perfectly the speeding up of the revival process. Eventually there’ll be revivals of scenes that were big last week, then yesterday, until pop collapses in on itself like black hole.
Simon Reynolds is right. While pop has always been derivative and nostalgic, it has also spawned genuinely new movements that eschewed the past like post punk, hip hop and rave. The likes of which we’ll never see again. Thing is, while splintered scenes and the ubiquity of the past on iPods and the internet makes being original more difficult, didn’t we already know this? Even if something genuinely real and new came along I’d be too old to enjoy it properly anyway. The fact that it almost certainly won’t happen, is in many ways, a relief to me. That is why me and the rest of KTF can relax and happily mine, from the comfort of our laptops, the last 40 years of pop for gems and rarities and bring them to the party knowing that not only will it be good, but better than most new shit and definitely better than early 00s skate rock.
The next KTF will be at The Baby Bathhouse, Church St, on 30th September.
Tuesday, 30 August 2011
Saturday 10th September
That's right...the first of not one, but two fist-kissing opportunities for you this month - this one is at our regular spot, The London Fields, with The Baby Bathhouse in Stoke Newington coming up on the 30th.
We've all slept less this summer than at any other time in our lives. Jimpotent has actually been awake for more hours than there are in the same time period. Amazing. This has, if anything, only improved our already finely-honed musical selection skills.
As usual, we'll be dropping the best in europop, yachtronica, DetroitItaloFunky and the hottest records from all the modern discotheques. Entry costs nought but a smile. 9.30ish til 3.
http://soundcloud.com/ktf/summer-madness
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)