Events

Alasdair Roberts expands to a 4-piece for this tour, joined by the Finnish band Kiila, who comprise members of Kemialliset Ystavat, Islaja, Shogun Kunitoki, Avarus and Pekko Kappi.

The tour begins at AV10 festival at The Sage Gateshead and then heads north for 8 dates in a range of varyingly remote Scottish outposts.

Glasgow-based Alasdair Roberts has now released 5 albums of tender yet driving folk music, since his ‘discovery’ via Will ‘Bonnie Prince Billy’ Oldham’s advocacy on hearing a demo tape.

The last four of Roberts’ albums have been on the big US indie Drag City and he has shared stages with Joanna Newsom, Magnolia Electric Co, Smog, Charalambides and countless others. Alasdair's last album Spoils is widely regarded as his strongest collection to date and graced many recent end of year polls. You can also see him on the front cover of the March edition of The Wire.

Shogun Kunitoki are from Finland and haver never played in the UK before. They have a love of vintage synths and keyboards, oscillators and ring modulators, and have produced two albums of driving and insistent instrumental psychedelic rock that have excited adventurous music fans across the globe with their deft mix of lysergic revivalism and post-rock innovation.

Their second album, Vinonaamakasio (2009) saw Shogun Kunitoki claim full mastery of their somehow nostalgic yet futuristic and unique sound, with a fuller and fatter feel in both performance and production – the sound of a band in full possession of their powers.

“There are splinters of Stereolab, bubbles of Broadcast, squeaks straight out of BBC Radiophonic experiments, the heart and soul of The Silver Apples... The end result, while oddly familiar, is almost impossibly irresistible and is sure to end up on many a top10 list at the end of the year. Shogun Kunitoki’s use of crusty analogue instrumentation and that band dynamic injects the project with the human element lacking from so much electronic music. You can hear the band busy at work, shakers rattling, keys being pressed, drums being hit – and it’s all the better for it. I was beginning to think music of this calibre had died out completely.” Boomkat.com

This will be the first ever UK tour by Kiila, a collective based in Turku, Finland whose eclectic tastes are betrayed by their ever more adventurous recordings and live sets.

Kiila released their 3rd album Tuota Tuota in June 2009 and, in the words of Dusted Magazine: “Kiila’s greatest coup is shoehorning genuine song craft into this mix without upsetting the balance. (For example) album opener, Viisi Hirvasta. For its first half it’s a hypnotizing instrumental built from plangent strings, stray percussion, and a recurring melody on the bass, until a half-chanted/half-sung passage emerges near its conclusion, making you wonder if it started life as a song, a poem or a jam. Tuota Tuota is full of moments like these, where you have to question how it is your listening, as all your usual hierarchies are upended and genres turned on their heads. That you at first don’t quite realize Kiila is doing this is remarkable; that they make it seem so natural is even more so.”

Often compared to like-minded US acts such as MV&EE, Wooden Wand and Espers, who have all found significant audiences in the UK and US, Killa are regarded by those who know them as at least as equally musically profound and influential but still to reap their much-deserved wider recognition.

http://www.alasdairroberts.com/
http://www.kiila.com/
http://www.shogunkunitoki.com