KIT are a super-melodic experimental rock band mainly from Los Angeles, California. They were recently described by Rob Barber of High Places as "a strange intersection where Void meet Incredible String Band". This gives some insight into their wonderful muddling on genres. They play fast, short, defiant songs that mess with the ideas of pop music and wayward punk. Maybe they'll start off playing a song straight - sweetness and light abounds - but before you know it everything gets flipped on its head and chased into damaged terrain. KIT songs can typically embrace hardcore rush, pop verse, jagged noise and cheer rally, all within the same moment - nothing but raw energy and instinctive songwriting holding it all together.

KIT are Kristy (vocals / yelps), Steve (guitar / thrashing), Vice Cooler (drums / freakouts) and George (guitar / feedback). Said members also perform in The Raincoats, XBXRX, Common Eider King Eider, Evangelista, Hawnay Troof, Snowsuit* and Warbler. In addition to their Upset The Rhythm records, the band have released split 7" singles with WIVES, Deerhoof, Captain Ahab and Rose for Bodhan, and Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore's Mirror/Dash.

'INVOCATION'

Cure Light Wounds

UTR038 | CD / LP | 10 tracks, 30 mins | October 2010

'INVOCATION' is KIT's second full-length and sees them producing a decidedly more reflective and considered album. Rooted in the occult and metaphysics, it's drenched in West Coast sunshine noir - a contradiction of excessive over-the-top speed-demon pop and ominous leviathans lurking right below the surface.

Recorded at the Department of Safety in Anacortes, Washington aka "Nowhere" - before this legendary all-ages art space shut down - the band removed all of its familiar comfort zones for the sessions of 'INVOCATION'. The northern latitude meant longer days to work in and a refurbished fire station to play with, the sound of its concrete halls folding into Phil Elverum's (Microphones, Mount Eerie) unorthodox recording.

The isolation pulled the band out of its typical California home recording element. Going all analogue tape for recording, forced the group to re-think its process in terms of real time and maximising each track's potential. Elverum's unique recording merged well with the band's past DIY self-produced recording ethic. Guest appearances of violinist Nora Danielson (The Intima, Mirah) and bassist Themba Lewis (The Intima, Tara Jane O'Neil) add a contour to the recording that makes its presence most strongly felt on "Dreams Are Burned" - another version appears on the 7" EP with Mike Watt.

'INVOCATION' is an album about fixation, destiny and total, complete honesty. The album overspills with melodies and ideas that turn inside out over and over again - an album of happy accidents and exhilarating leaps of faith. It marks an area of lyrical maturity for the band. Singer / lyricist, Kristy, says it's about "how the people you love (doesn’t have to be romantic) are revolving around you like planets and you are their sun. Their life revolves around you and that can take a lot of getting used to". Other sources of inspiration include Kenneth Anger's 'Invocation Of My Demon Brother'.

"Merticane" kicks off the album, with jarring guitars and drums preparing a near explosive drama for Kristy's tale of awkward dawning love to unfold. "Ambrosia" is the most prototypical light-footed KIT song, tackling their punk pop unrest in a new way - pushing through convention and adding their own uplifting uneasiness to proceedings.

"Cure Light Wounds" springs and recoils as it unwinds into a chorus of insistent demands - "Won't you mend my broken heart?" pleads Kristy increasingly frenzied. "Out Of Ruins" resolves out of restraint, its heavy tread of twisting feedback and lurching chaos plunges into an ice cold pool of introspection that the band try to escape to no avail.

"Broke Heart" closes the album with a delightful twist, the initial burst of liveliness crumbling into a reverberating three-minute coda of ascendent bass and guitar drone with building percussion that becomes progressively more epic and resplendent at the same time, Boredoms-style.

With 'INVOCATION', KIT have created a record that enjoys defying expectations. KIT successfully capture everything between excitement and heartbreak - a sense of wonderment at the interactions contained in the world around us all without calling on higher powers or casting any spells.

'DREAMS ARE BURNED' FEAT. MIKE WATT

Flat Earth

UTR026 | 7" | 4 tracks, 9 mins | 24 Nov 2008

KIT have written a batch of new songs that break the lengths of past efforts, yet delve into structural experiments with the same ferocity.

Vice Cooler hit on the idea of having Mike Watt guest on the tracks, and while George's suggestion of covering Jefferson Airplane's psychedelic classic "White Rabbit" with Watt on vocals was canned, the band did re-visit "Flat Earth" - a paean to their home town of Oakland that featured on debut LP 'Broken Voyage'.

The three other songs are filled out with melodic runs by the Minutemen and Stooges legend, while KIT's Steve holds down the official bass duties. Some horn overdubs by Jenna Thornhill of Silver Daggers / Mika Miko also find their way into the mix.

Lyrics touch on the state of ecological and political disrepair that even the least crustafarian music fan would have to notice in 2008, post-peak oil and in the last throes of Bush doctrine. Will we make it out the other side? The closing song offers some hopes.

The artwork is an intricate collage by Jessalyn Aaland, who has performed similar duties for Business Lady and Foot Village.

'BROKEN VOYAGE'

Star Sign | Forest

UTR008 | Digipack CD / LP | 11 tracks, 22 mins | 9 Apr 2007 | Buy

'Broken Voyage' is KIT's debut full-length about adventure, secrets, escape and the night. The album is an energetic blast of innovation and fun, with songs running in unpredictable yet ever electrifying directions. "Fixed Compass" is a hyperactive call-to-arms of gang chants and gnarly guitar duelling, which builds to an explosion only to regroup with slowly unfolding carnage. "Coast Of Arms" is a queasy seasick rampage, punctuated with a frantic drum breakdown and an urgent vocal from Kristy - a barrage of punked noise which descends into spectral electronic oddness, before triumphantly seizing the party pulse once more.

KIT don't stand on ceremony, they make their point, move on, then make another point, always with an intrepid sense of discovery in the heart of their sound. 'Broken Voyage' is an album of juxtaposition and invention, as surprising as it is involving - an incredible genre-leaping debut from a band on a mission to startle the life back into music.