KYLE KRONE ‘ALONE IN PARADISE’

Interview with charismatic, award-winning purveyor of bitter-sweet melodies). New single ‘Alone In Paradise’, shimmers with a true story, eloquently. 

As founder and frontman of indie rock band The Shys, musician, composer and producer, Californian, Kyle, took LA by storm, then joined his musical hero’s (incl Talking Heads, The Cure, and The Smiths) on Sire Records. Krone’s songs featured on multiple TV and movies. The Shys also topped Billboard’s US Garage Rock Charts.

After extensive touring, a solo career and sonic shift earned new fans (Kings Of Leon included), impressive record sales and myriad co-writing partnerships. A good soul, Kyle Krone is on some musical ride! Kelly Munro joins in…

Kelly : “Tell us, how long have you been making music?

Kyle : “Twenty three years”.

What have been some of your highlights so far on your musical journey?

“Making music is an enduring highlight for me. Music is my angel, saves me over and over again.”

Your latest single is called ‘Alone In Paradise’, who would you pick to be alone in paradise with – and why?

“My loved ones… 

When you dedicate your life to something like music, its enormously significant to have supportive friends and family around you because like anything worth doing its no easy feat to attempt to make this thing your life and make a living doing it. So I derive a great deal of joy from all the people around me who are supportive encouraging and understanding.”

Tell us more about that single. Is there a story behind it?

Listen to Alone in Paradise on Spotify. Kyle Krone · Song · 2020.

“It’s this bitter-sweet love letter to my life in Central America. I think anyone who has moved to a foreign country on their own will understand this particular kind of loneliness. 

Its a long story but the cliff notes go something like this… After many years of living on the road and in the studio I needed a change of pace, I wanted to move to a foreign country and live a different kind of life, more peace, more nature, more quiet. Sort of a live off the land type thing…

I found that in a little remote fishing village in Central America for the better part of three years. I lived simply, little apartment on the beach, an old motorcycle, a nylon string guitar, a couple surfboards and a lot of books and journals. Life there can almost feel like going back in time, technology and status has a much less significant impact on daily life and you’re surrounded by raw natural beauty and you find yourself with a lot more free time just to think, feel, read and write, for the lack of a better description life is just a lot more simple there for me. You find yourself more in tune with yourself.

You slow down, the noise dissipates and its like you can hear a lot more clearly and you get a deeper sense of what really matters. There also exists this sort of bittersweet element of missing all your loved ones or experiencing all this beauty on your own and then you have visitors and you share it and its incredible and then they leave and its its own kind of emotional challenge.

The song was born out of those experiences and musically inspired by the landscape culture and geography. There is this kind of emotional inventory you take on yourself and there’s some voice in me that drives me to keep pushing with my music, I have too many ideas, too many things to say, I feel too much and it’s as if life in the tropics just let me rest and recuperate and eventually I kind of felt like that life let me go and I feel all this desire to come up here to California and surrender myself to my music”.

We hear you’ve lived in Los Angeles. Tell us about life there…

“I moved there when I was eighteen, for a little while and ended up back down south at the beach. The city life thing has an early expiration date with me. I prefer a slower pace, less people and more of a natural environment. I lived there off and on from twenty to twenty-five, mostly because of music. 

I like the east side, the little neighborhoods, the cafes, the record stores, the bohemians, artists etc. The beach is also cool, Topanga, certain parts of Malibu. Every-time I lived there it was about music, making records there, playing shows there. It can be really exciting all the action that comes along with it. Most days were spent in the studio when I lived in LA and then the nightlife of playing shows and going out on the town. These days I visit to surf.”

What albums do you never get tired of listening to?

“Anything from Astrud Gilberto, Louis Armstrong, Stan Getz, Robert Francis, The Strokes, Scott Walker, Bob Marley, Leonard Cohen.

Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of French stuff. Polo And Pan, Parcels, Benjamin Biolay. I found this amazing playlist called Cote’D”Azur cause I had written a song with that title and wanted to see how many others were out there and came across this insane playlist and its so good.”

What can we expect from you this year?  

“I started a new band called Casual Vice with my very talented friend Brandon Hoogenboom and we recruited more talented friends Danny Franks and Billy Yarbrough. 

We have some singles out and our debut EP comes out in early August. I am in the studio every day writing recording and playing and making art and visuals. I work with my friend Wes Chiller on most of his stuff, we’ve got a new single coming out, its one of my favorite collaborations. I co-wrote a song with Eagle Rock Gospel Singers for their new album. Mark Batson and I have made a lot of new music for various film and tv projects that will hopefully see the light of day sooner than later. I am making this blissed out instrumental music under the name Floating Islands kind of in the vein of Brian Eno stuff and I’ve been releasing new solo singles. 

I don’t plan on slowing down anytime soon. For the past three or four years I’ve essentially been working every single day on music and its been insane and pretty amazing, I’d like to claim that I have some kind of otherworldly work ethic but the truth is I am just obsessed to to achieve the stuff I hear in my head. I’m excited, I feel really positive about the future, feels good that folks are listening.”

Pre-save Casual Vice‘s EP (out August) on Spotify

https://kylekrone.info/

Words: Kelly Munro

BLAB: ‘R.I.P.’

Heeoojazfuq single!

Released on the Essexual Cool Thing Records, ‘R.I.P.’, the debut single from Blab, has got the ROCK swagger of myriad main stage strutters with youth’s literate suss rapping over with bite. Ice-cool as Johnny Marr guitar. BOLD never gets old. This rock is boulder.

Kinda liked it from first listen. Kinda freaking LOVE it, ‘cos I went back, and again. Ha ha. That first listen evoked a memory of Polly Harvey (from Yeovil in the black leather jacket and docs) when she debuted on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury and a hundred thousand jaws dropped at P.J.Harvey’s bright pink cat suit. I enjoy being vintage but am thrilled that new heritage is being made. Blab is definitely a 50ft Queenie.

The musicians who are a product of two decades of popular culture amplified by the world wide web have no boundaries of inspiration. Music, Art, Books, Politics and working things out for themselves into new thrills and hope for us all. Dystopian pop twisted into The Streets with punk’s DIY arsekick. 

Aah, that sign off line…

Having supported Rat Boy as a teen, composer, vocalist and guitarist Fran Murray a.k.a. Blab is building her own reputation (rapidly) with this real contender. It’s a year of artists having to stand up, gig-less, on the strength of their skills, charisma and creativity. Straight on the must-catch-a-show bucket list! 

Lyrically a knowing wit-spit of frustration, ‘R.I.P.’ is a helluva way to debut. As isolation creation videos go, this is DIY beyond lockdown’s inhibitors;

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

I wish Earth could say RIP to billionaires and other planet/humanity fuckers. The reality of everything could drive you screeching crazy if, every now and then, you don’t listen to massive freakers like ‘R.I.P.’ – People, turn up this medicine!

Added to TheZineUK’s #NewerWave Rocks Spotify Playlist, too.

Words: Caffy St Luce

THOMAS BARTLETT; ‘SHELTER’

Available 24th July 2020 (on Modern Records/BMG), Thomas Bartlett’s debut solo album ‘Shelter’ contains eight piano nocturnes, inspired, he says, by the work of Chopin, Satie, Ravel, Talk Talk and Keith Jarrett. He recorded it in his home studio in New York over two days at the beginning of lockdown as a way of creating something calming.  Thomas explains:  “There’s a space that I really love to be in, as a listener, and as a player.  It’s a feeling of arrival, and comfort, and peace.  It’s an easy place for me to get to, but one that I’m suspicious of because of that.”  He was initially unsure whether the songs were good enough to share, but was quickly convinced by friends.

For those who do not know the name, Thomas Bartlett has been a successful musician, composer, and producer for twenty years.  He has performed as Doveman, with many bands including Antony and the Johnsons, David Byrne, Frightened Rabbit, and his own group, The Gloaming.  As a producer, he has worked with a long list of artists including Glen Hansard, Martha and Rufus Wainwright, Norah Jones, Yoko Ono, Joan Wasser, and Sufjan Stevens, with whom he earned award nominations for “Mystery of Love”.  However, this debut album is something slightly different, featuring as it does just a solo piano, and being straight from his heart; it is inspired by his partner as well as his lifelong love of roses (all of the song titles are the names of different varieties of roses).

Right from the opening notes of ‘Lucida’ Thomas gifts the listener with a beautifully melancholic melody that drips with a sadness and longing, which even the fast arpeggio runs cannot shake, played as it is at a wistfully pedestrian tempo.  The pace somehow slows further on ‘Rubrifolia’ and you appreciate what the composer meant when he describes the album as ‘immersive’; you slip into these songs like you would getting under sheets, or onto a big sofa but it still does require your attention.  It borders on being ambient but is definitely not background music, there is too much movement in the melodies to let it just float over you.

The repetition of phrases in ‘Xanthina’ eloquently expresses a nervous person trying to say something and starting a sentence over and over until it finally flows from them.  The timing, with the pauses and breaks and repeated melodic lines is breath-taking.  The song really feels like a conversation as it moves from one voice to another and it is stunning how one instrument can evoke so much in the listener’s mind. 

The playing is of course excellent throughout, but the attention to tone and dynamics shows the benefits of being the producer, composer and player, as Thomas ekes out even more emotion from less complex passages.  Even when there is almost nothing going on, more information about the mood is being presented through the timbre and space captured by this master producer and engineer.  

Thomas mentions his inspiration comes from late era Talk Talk and he is following Mark Hollis’ advice almost to the letter: “Before you play two notes, learn how to play one note… And don’t play one note unless you’ve got a reason to play it.”  It is clear that Thomas has every reason to play these notes.

There is light and shade throughout the album and the tempo increases on ‘Multiflora’ driven by the constantly shifting left hand part.  ‘Moschato’ has a similar rhythmic force in its left hand part but is more withdrawn in its performance.  ‘Phoenicia’ moves beautifully, with key changes and modulations masterfully constructed.  Moments of discord are effortlessly resolved but their presence serves to leave the listener not knowing where the melody will shift to next.  

The final minutes of closing track ‘Rugosa’ draw the listener in closer, I can’t tell whether this is due to the damper pedal not being used or a change in microphone position, but the air and space in the room seems suddenly to close in.  It’s as if at the end of album, musician and listener are not separated by space; music always has been a beautiful way of bringing people closer together and Thomas has demonstrated this perfectly with such a striking ending to his album.

The production and sound achieved reminds me of Paul Buchanan’s solo album “Mid-air”.  The piano is closely mic’d so you hear the hammers on strings and the creak of the pedals; I love this style of recording solo instruments, as you get a feeling you are in the room with the musician, rather than listening from a distance.  Pure recordings of a piano sound have their place but can be a little sterile; here however, the production puts you sitting on the piano bench with Thomas.  That said, if you want that pure sound, you will be forever annoyed with each squeak of the keys and groan of the damper pedal.

The album may have been conceived out of a feeling of isolation, fear and doubt, but it is an emotional and positive listening experience.

Words: Alan Neilson

BALCONY FESTIVAL 007: BONDING.

For the Carers UK charity, on Saturday 18th July 2020 from 6pm GMT – Balcony Online Festival Number 7

Katie Malco – God Is In The TV Zine. Stage
Vincent Bugozi – Benumu Stage
Nervous Twitch – Reckless Yes Stage
David Woodcock – Joyzine Stage
Mouse – LOUD WOMEN Stage
Gris-de-Lin – Sonic Tonic Stage
KJ & The Fox – GigSlutz Stage
Dan O’Farrell & The Difference Engine – Quarantini – Live Virtual Bar
Donate to Carers UK: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/balconyfestival7

Who cares for the ever essential Carers of our society, – what would we be without them? They are so appreciated, and Carers UK care, that’s who.  
https://www.carersuk.org/ Give thanks/support, and if you can, please give money.

These events are exclusive and personal performances from high quality, selected artists via a coalition of key media, industry mover shakers and future makers.

BalconyOnlineFest #Preview (DIY/audio quality!) highly pleasurable and informal chat with aural sunshine, Vincent Bugozi, playing the #Benumu Stage of Balco...

SEBA! – musical joy bringer, Vincent Bugozi will be appearing on the Benumu Stage. Part of Team Balcony, hear more about this pro active music platform from an artists perspective, plus what to expect at Balcony 7 and raise a smile in this quick festival preview interview. Vincent aces it. Interviewer’s very DIY! Luckily, our welcoming Festival Host, Louise Schofield, is a seasoned and acclaimed media professional!

In fact, Balcony Festival is always teaming up! Get 10% discount with the code BALCONY10 on festival refreshments from the  #PubInABox Signature Brew. The Eastenders-land based outfit have been we’re hiring musicians who have had their tours cancelled to help with deliveries.

Signature Brew create music-inspired beers and collaborate with musicians. Kinda the perfect fit for the spirit of Balcony Festival. The Live Streams involved music world chats and virtual meet ups. So hopefully seeya Saturday evening. As ever, “down the front”! Here:

Created by independent UK blogs and promoters, Balcony Festival aims to raise much needed funds for Carers UK Donate here: https://www.justgiving.com/fundrai...

Words: Caffy St Luce

THE BLINDERS: ‘FANTASIES OF A STAY AT HOME PSYCHOPATH’

The Blinders release their second album. Alan Neilson reviews.

What are the chances of releasing an album called ‘Fantasies of a Stay At Home Psychopath’ at the exact moment in time when the world is forced to stay at home? 

The Blinders’ second album was due to be released in May, right at the height of lockdown in the UK, but was delayed due to difficulties in guaranteeing pressing and shipping in time for the original release date, as well as not being able to play live and promote the album with live shows.

All of the tour supporting the album was cancelled and rescheduled for September**, which even now seems a little optimistic at best, and unlikely at worst, when pockets of the country enter further localised lockdowns. As pubs begin opening, live venues are some way off being ready post-pandemic… if there ever is such a thing. **(scroll down for new dates in 2021)

As the album was recorded at the end of 2019, its title is a scary coincidence rather than prophetic, but the subject matter as before on ‘Columbia’ still draws from social commentary and current affairs, as well as the ever more likely approaching dystopia.

The album starts off in true Blinders’ style with ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’, as if the echoes of the thumping tom toms of ‘Brutus’ bled down the corridors and followed them through streets and halls into the new studio.  

Their producer this time is Rob Ellis and he has not tried to change much about the band’s sound; it is still like a battering ram, but he has added to their sonic palette with backing vocals, interesting reverbs and sound effects, and the welcome addition of multiple guitars.  This is not an album that can be reproduced live without recruiting players.  Right from this first track there is a theme that runs through the album: one of taking from literature and repackaging in rock.  The lyrics and song titles seem familiar because they are already out there, with the opening track you have Shakespeare or Ray Bradbury, depending on your taste in books.

‘Forty Days and Forty Nights’ follows, well known from the 2019 tour, it sounds just as powerful as it did on stage.  Again the title has religious connotations with connections to both Jesus and the great flood. 

‘Lunatic With A Loaded Gun’ is a marvel as it shifts and moves in surprising directions with the chorus practically bursting from a semi-spoken introductory verse, with a wonderfully simple semitone interval F to E.  For me, this track is where The Blinders show they have improved their song-writing craft.

When ‘Circle Song’ was released as an early single in February, it appeared to be the grand shift in the band’s sound, as they incorporate more than their usual three instruments by adding a piano and stunning backing vocals, however, like ‘Orbit’ it is a brief interruption to normal services.  The song’s fine melody seems to show their skills have improved by great leaps, until you realise that it is scarily close in parts to the melodic structure of ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ with the chord progression of F#m to F to A to D – but where they then go to the well used major to minor trick, Floyd take it further in a different direction altogether.  Once you hear that similarity it is difficult to shake off and even Thomas’ second lead guitar break feels like it is going to morph into a Gilmour riff, but never actually does (the first lead break is sublime though, conjuring up memories of Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’).  

The lyric somewhat clumsily tips its hat in the direction of the band’s heroes being a constant force of inspiration, like Bowie “Who’d know about the Norfolk Broads” (as if before ‘Life On Mars?’ no one had heard of the national park); as well as George Harrison “How I wish to find my own Sweet Lord”; Edward Bulwer-Lytton “The pen is the sword”; Icarus “Perhaps I flew too close to the light”.  There is a tendency for rhyme to force the narrative of the song, which can be restrictive and may be how Bowie’s Norfolk Broads found its way into the song following the previous lines’ rhymes: Accord, sword, Broads, Lord, abroad… then later: words, birds, unheard.  It is a shame because in other places on the record Thomas will come out with something beautifully simple like “I’m quiet because I don’t like to waste words” and again earlier on the album he states: “recently I have fallen into a bad habit of silence” which he rhymes with violence in the previous line, but it does not sound forced there.

‘I Want Gold’ has a Doors feel with a Morrison sounding vocal over a pounding rhythm, as Thomas screams about the conquistadors looting South America and how this has never stopped even though the countries involved are different.  

‘Interlude’ is exactly that as it seems to split the album into two parts.  It differs from the other songs, featuring no guitars only a laid back jazz lounge piano part that is almost Bacharach meets Pink Floyd, but here it is juxtaposed with a sinister spoken vocal which spits out bile and frustration.  

The second half of the album begins with ‘Mule Track’, and it is heavy, I mean really heavy, with Sabbath-esque riffs tempered only by a stunning Hammond organ. 

Taken from the album 'Fantasies Of A Stay At Home Psychopath'. Out now https://theblinders.lnk.to/FOASAHP Directed by Sam Crowston. LYRICS What hell has hell...

“Rage at the Dying of the Light” contains stunning guitar work that I wanted to hear on their debut album and this shows their arrangements are so much improved by having more than one guitar pounding away.

‘From Nothing to Abundance’ does sound a little like their own ‘L’etat C’est Moi’ – with equally outstanding lyrics, this time about the transitory nature of life; empires rise and empires will fall, inevitably.  After ‘Lunatic’, this is the best track on the album.  

The influence of Pink Floyd reappears on ‘Black Glass’ as ‘Have A Cigar’ is almost quoted: “I’m a TV star, gonna go far,” as well as one of its guitars producing a single note guitar solo sounding like Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain’ opening.  They are masters at creating atmosphere and the tempo changes here are inventive and a welcome change in their song arrangements.  “In This Decade” finishes the album and channels Bob Dylan unashamedly with the folk chord progression and lines like “If you need me babe”.  Along with the occasional nod to Poe’s ‘The Raven’, the band again seems to want either to wear their influences where everyone can see them, or want to appear well read and bookish.  It is certainly more entertaining listening to this album than the usual lyrical offerings from the indie or alternative genres, which at worst is just all surface.

There is a lot to admire about The Blinders’ follow-up to their 2018 debut, but part of me thinks they spent so much time on tour and not enough time really finding a new voice, that it’s hardly surprising that at times, perhaps unconsciously, music they love has heavily influenced this new set of songs. 

There is a feeling that The Blinders are still searching for their signature sound and because they wear their influences so proudly, sometimes those influences show themselves too readily and are so intertwined with the band’s original intention that they dilute it somehow.  I did feel almost too often throughout listening to the record, that something they were doing sounded like something somebody else had already done.

I suppose there is no real issue with emulating your heroes, but I have to ask, what makes those heroes so good?  I would argue that they were either pioneers, or they took from what went before them and added something to it.  If the artists of today take from their heroes and add nothing, then where are the heroes of the future going to come from?  I have to admit that I was hoping for more of an artistic leap on this second album, as it is not too dissimilar to their debut.  Melodically they are still using standard blues harmonic progressions, occasionally dipping into a relative minor, or the old songwriter trick of playing the major chord followed immediately by its minor inversion… not particularly adventurous.  Now I may be being harsh on the band, but if they are never questioned or forced to be more imaginative, then in another year they will have another album which follows this pattern.  Artists should be pushed to be more daring; to work harder and produce a more perfect piece of art… this record is closer without doubt.

The thing is, I can still smell the stench of the Gallagher brothers in so many songs by this generation of bands; and remember Oasis repackaged their heroes, so now we have musicians copying musicians who copied musicians (on the shoulders of the shoulders of giants indeed).  In fact, the Gallagher virus has infected alt-pop and indie music since mid-90s and it is still lurking in some of this album’s songs.  I understand that kids coming of age in the wake of Oasis’ success believe they were the best thing since The Beatles became bigger than Jesus, but I honestly hated almost everything Oasis did, so don’t quite understand the fascination.  The problem for me is that their popularity and all-consuming influence has made a whole generation of up and coming songwriters lazy, with formulaic songs and dull production.  I can hear those overused chords and cliched lyrics a mile off.

Despite any negativity you read between the lines here, don’t misinterpret my message: this album is still an incredible piece of work.  What The Blinders give you is an outpouring of emotion and feeling.  Sometimes their sword is mightier than their pen but sometimes that is necessary.  There are too many cerebral bands making clever noises when sometimes you actually need a sledgehammer to really nail it.  There is still a rawness and an edge to their music and that makes it very listenable indeed.

‘Fantasies of a Stay At Home Psychopath’ is a fine album, like a Blinders juggernaut lumbering as well as powering down the highway, with a few stops when they go off at a tangent into a musical cul-de-sac.  The fact is though that the dead end streets they have visited on this album are much more interesting than the path they have worn for themselves.  I was under the impression, the album as a whole was a change of direction, but it isn’t really.  But saying that, they are still moving forward and improving every time they write.  So is it a step up from their debut?  Well like 2020, it is a case of a few steps forward and a couple of steps back.

Words: Alan Neilson 
(artwork/photography by Sam Crowston).

‘Fantasies of a Stay At Home Psychopath’ – digital / vinyl – released 17th July2020 https://theblindersofficial.com/ (Modern Sky)

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 March 2021 Tour Announced: