This piece was originally featured in AM02 — Issue Two of Ascribe. Click here to read it alongside the rest of the issue.
Your project is a hybrid of spoken word and grunge, indie music, which is very original, it’s super cool. I feel like it’s something that you’ve carved out for yourself really well. Do you try to push the boundaries of genre and messaging through your music?
My main thing is with the stuff that I make, I want it to sound like someone’s taken a concentrated version of me and then put it into audible form. So, everything that’s heard is 100% genuine and it’s kind of a little bit of an insight into how just kind of eclectic and busy my mind is. I didn’t want it to sound like anyone else relaying these messages, even though it’s sometimes messages that people have heard before. I wanted it to come across as the most original experience that it could be because I wanted it to solely be from myself, not catered to anyone else.
Speaking of the EP, “How To Kill A Man,” could you talk us through the process of writing and recording? Where were you initially inspired, why did you want to release an EP in the first place?
Of course. The whole concept of KC Blackwater as a project is that I was just getting to the point where I was getting so angry and frustrated and annoyed at so many things that it was trying to make me kind of giggle a bit. Like that kind of post-anger laughter where it’s that little bit deranged. And like I said, I wanted to kind of put that essence into audio form. So that’s why the guitars sound so crazy and scratchy and chicken scratch kind of thing. And I wanted the bass lines to sound big and imposing, but in a slightly comedic way. The writing process for me has always been music first. If I don’t like the instrumental for a song, it’s not going to make it to being a fully complete song. I want the audio to fully be listenable and interesting enough on its own. And then if I like it, it makes me consider what I want to say over it more. There’s not really a wasted track. I don’t want any filler or anything. I’d rather have things that I only kind of believe in and care about, even if it means that I’m putting out these projects in short bursts of three to four songs. The writing process was basically that three of the songs were ready before I went out on tour in October last year. Three of them were completely ready and I just couldn’t get the fourth one down. And it was so frustrating. Like, this project could be out by now. It would have been out around Christmas, early January, but I decided to stick with it just because it didn’t feel complete without this fourth song, How To Kill A Man, which has now become the namesake of the project. I felt like the instrumental held some importance to me in the overall landscape of the project, but then, message-wise, I think it really ties up the EP into a cohesive message. All of the other tracks are kind of more me telling rather than asking, whereas the last track is hopefully a little bit more of a call to action, to have some difficult conversations and ask some strange questions and really start to think about things.
Yeah, that sounds super cool. I mean, I was going to ask as well, what made you decide to name the EP after that song.
Yeah. For me, How To Kill A Man is all about considering, right, I’ve got all these problems that I’ve wittered on about for three EPS straight. But how do you deal with the perpetrator? How do you take someone that’s, in the first EP overwhelmingly racist, or someone that abuses innocence, such as the kind of antagonists of this third EP – what do we actually start to do with the people that do that? And I’m hoping I could have gone on a whole tirade and shadowed my inner Rage Against the Machine and told you to do something, but it’s more I want to make people think about what they actually want to do. If you are feeling nuts, have doubt about all of this terrible shit going on all the time, then what are you going to do about it? And actually start to consider that.
Like a little bit more reactionary. I think that’s super cool, for sure. And it makes sense, I mean, within the context of what you’ve put out before as well.
I’m glad. Like you said, there’s definitely been a progression. This feels like I’ve finally reached kind of the beginnings of the potential of this project. The first two very much felt like test beds. They were like kind of the first child, the guinea pig, whereas this is now more cohesive. Because the last track wasn’t coming together, it gave me more time to more meticulously produce the other songs and consider how they all fit into the landscape of the project. And yeah, I definitely feel that there’s been a progression.
Yeah, definitely. For sure. So the EP starts off with “Kids,” which I really liked, kind of gave me the vibe of “People” by The 1975 in the same tone of message. And I thought that the style was also pretty similar, which I thought was super interesting and that same kind of thing of mainstream artists kind of trying to be a little bit subversive, but not too much.
Yeah, it’s kind of like, I don’t know, Baby’s First Revolution. Yeah, like Revolution for Dummies.
Absolutely. So, I was wondering what made you decide to kick the EP off with that song? Was that an intentional choice? Was that setting a tone going forward for the rest of the EP?
Yeah, it was the first song that I wrote for this project. I’d been stuck in this creative rut for about four to five months, where I was going out on tour and then I was coming back and I was like, I need to write the next thing. And then I just hit my head at it, hate everything, go back on tour, and it was a real mess. And I came home one day and I went into this borderline trance-like state and then just came out of it like, oh, there’s a song that sounds pretty cool. It was a really rare occasion where I did everything, including the vocal, like the first state vocals, all just in one setting. Normally I take my time to consider it, but it was at the height of some of the coverage on Prince Andrew, Ghislaine Maxwell. Obviously it’s been a real hot topic in recent years, with the whole Epstein scandal and all of the black book and whatever, and I got really frustrated at how people see the surface level of all these people have done a terrible thing, but they never really consider how they get into that position in the first place. What allowed them to do this? I wanted to kickstart the overwhelming anger of the whole EP, about abusive positions of power and the subjugation of innocence and trying to use it for your own gains. I have a very strong mental image with certain tracks – in the video game series Borderlands, the first two games have this intro-cinematic where it’s this beast roaming a landscape and all of a sudden, music just cuts in and gets hit by, like, a freight train or a car or something. I really wanted that energy to come across. So that’s why you’ve got the first riff where it’s kind of like, oh, this sounds cool, then the drums and everything come in, you’ve got that dive bomb guitar sound and it felt like a real roundhouse punch to start it off. That’s the main reason I had it as the first song anyway.
Yeah, for sure. I think it’s really interesting how you don’t realise you draw inspiration from certain, funny places until you do, or that you don’t understand.
I’m a bit of a sponge for information. I’m a constant point of just intaking everything, whether it’s that I do a lot of cooking and while I’m cooking, I’ll be listening to a documentary and audiobook. If I’m out on a walk, I can’t just walk around and be like, oh, that’s a cool bird, or whatever. I’ll have to know everything about that bird. Like, what is it? Where does it come from? Am I going to see it again? Is it migratory? I’m just on a constant go, mentally, really. It’s cool being able to put across some of the stuff that’s jumbled about in my mind in a creative form.
Yeah, I was going to say definitely probably a useful skill in terms of, like, channelling it into your work.
Yeah, now that I’ve managed to put a bit of a leash on it. It used to be very overwhelming, but now it feels much more channelable.
Yeah, cool. And moving on to “The Body,” which I think is also a song that has kind of a switch up towards the end.
Yes, I do love a beat switch.
I love it. I thought it was so cool. I really, really liked it. But could you talk me through the process of recording that? What do you towards maybe choosing that as a single?
First of all, I think my partner would kill me if it wasn’t the single. It’s the song that she’s listened to the most out of anything. But in all seriousness, I would put “How To Kill A Man” as a single, but I think that’s too important of a song that has to be listened to within the context of the EP and fully digested. It’s much more of a long-form consideration. Whereas “The Body” has the impact of songs like “Kids” and “Phineas Gage,” but it also has the content and questions that I want people to think about with the project. And also, it’s a little bit of a litmus test because I feel it will put the right people off of the project. It covers everything.
Yeah, I love that. So I wanted to ask also if you intentionally ordered the songs because I noticed that the EP was ordered with a shorter track like, sub two minutes and then followed by a longer track. I was wondering if that was something that you chose to do specifically.
Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t necessarily a thing where I set out to do it at first, but then when I had all of this, like, the instrumentals put together, I was like, okay, it sounds like this could go into that. That’s a good start. And then I’d like a slightly more longform song, but then it switched up in the second half. Then I want an absolute freight train, and then I want it to finish off on that crescendo, like that real high note. So it naturally fell into place, but only because I was considering the overall structure. Like, a good book has its dips and troughs, and it also has its peaks. And I want a project to be a whole experience of listening to where you have the ups and the downs. Then if people want to replay a song, they only want that up or they only want that down, then they’re free to do so over time.
Yeah, I thought it was a really cool way to structure it. And it was made very digestible for a first listen, even.
It’s having little palette cleansers in between.
You mentioned “Phineas Gage,” so I also wanted to ask you about that song. How much were you inspired by the real story? Were you, like, what made you decide to dedicate a song to this guy?
Okay, shout out all my A-Level Psychology students out there. It’s something where I wanted to take the overall feeling of mental degradation of being hit with so much blunt force trauma from constant news exposure and hearing millions of voices, which we’ve only been able to do in the past, like, ten to fifteen years. We weren’t built to just be hit with so much all at once. I kind of wanted to take that mental degradation that happens over time. Like I said before, I write all the audio before I wrote the lyrics and the guitars on that track are actually a fretless bass guitar. That’s why it sounds so slinky. But it had that real machine-like feeling to it and I was like, oh, this sounds like a freight train. That’s really cool. And yeah, just the whole story of Phineas Gage how, after having a railroad rod put through his head, he very obviously wasn’t the same guy afterwards. It’s a very visceral image. The thought of someone stumbling around after that and trying to keep some kind of grip on who they were and who they’re going to be and just trying to understand and make sense, all of it. That’s why the refrain in the track sounds similar every time it’s said, but it changes slightly every time to match him with the verse that’s just come before.
It works super well as a metaphor.
I’m glad. I was worried when I wrote it. I was just like, oh, no, it’s just going to be mocked by A-Level students.
No, I think you’ve gotten away with it. I wouldn’t worry. I wanted to ask if you had a personal favourite track. I know it’s like choosing between your children.
The thing is that the sheer amount of work and how much cohesion “How To Kill A Man” brings to the project really does make me happy. And not only that, how hard it hits when the drums first come in and it hits into that first chorus, I really like that energy. It took so long to get the feel of the song right, so the whole reason it was so hard wasn’t because of the instrumental and it wasn’t because of the necessary, because of what I was trying to say on it, but it was just the way that the vocal sounded over the track. I was like, no, this isn’t conveying what I want to say well enough. So, there’s like eleven different versions of “How To Kill A Man,” but this is just the one that I ended up being happy with, like, yeah, no, this gets everything across. I think that I do love all of the songs on it, I’m not going to lie. I listen to my music more than I listen to anything else, probably. I love the whole project and I think it’s such a cohesive listen. But even if I want to just dip into the individual songs, if I’ve got a minute and a half and I want to get angry, I’m going to listen to “Phineas Gage.” If I’ve got four and a bit minutes, I want that really cool first minute and forty seconds slog of “The Body” just to get to that beat switch. I’ve got the option there. So yeah, I think “How To Kill A Man” is probably the one that I look most favourably on, but I also think that’s just because of the amount of relief that I have that is actually finished.
Yeah, I’m not surprised. So you mentioned also, like, being on tour and I actually came to see you in Cambridge with Alfie Templeman, which was super cool. I really loved it.
Oh, sweet. That was a really fun show.
I was there! Nearly in the front row. I was wondering how you balance. Obviously, when you’re playing for someone else, you kind of have to move your focus towards them for a certain period of time. So when you come back, is it easy to get back into the flow of a project? How do you find the balance?
If anything, touring actually helps me maintain momentum a certain amount because when I’m on tour, I don’t just play bass for Alfie. I’m a backline tech as well. I’m a very busy person when I’m on tour. Like, if there’s something to do, I’m going to do it. I used to be a sound engineer and that really hasn’t left me because if I see a wire that needs patching, I’m patching that wire. I’m not going to the back room grabbing a beer or going out and having a tactical cigarette. I’m going to be doing what needs to be done. And so, because of that, when I’m on tour, I don’t really stop when we get into the venue until we leave. I’m on a constant go. I’ll sleep for 4 hours and then we’ll travel to the next place. And so, coming back home and all of a sudden just staring into the void for a little bit can be a very different, difficult thing. And I think it’s something that’s not really talked about by a lot of creatives within the industry, is just how difficult it can be to readjust when you come home. And so, KC is a really good way for me to kind of keep my mind going and topped up. And I just don’t go between nonstop work and complete brain rot. I’ve actually got a little bit in between where I can be like, okay, I’m going to put my focus here for a little bit now.
Yeah, I guess in a way it’s like a way for you to get out of your own mind.
It means that I can channel exactly what I’m feeling. I mean, I don’t feel like I come across as a massively angry guy, but I’ve got a lot of things that kind of pissed me off a little bit. That’s where it goes well, yeah. And not only that, I want people to be able to hear it and perhaps feel heard because they for the longest time haven’t known what to do with their stuff as well, like. Fucking finally, someone saying it. I kind of want to provide that release for other people with the release that I have whenever I come home off tour.
Yeah, definitely. So I wanted to ask as well what your goals are for the EP, where you see it kind of taking you – maybe if you’re going to try to get out and do some performances?
Yeah. The whole thing with this EP is everything is done within the four walls that I’m in at the moment in this room, from the song’s inception all the way to the release. That includes making merchandise, other than the t-shirts and tote bags that I’m going to do, which I’m doing in collaboration with a local vintage store, to try and keep everything as sustainable as possible and to include local business on it. Even if only ten people were to listen to the project, I just want to sow some seeds of counterculture to everything that’s going on at the moment. Like, I highly doubt people are going to be TikTok dancing to this and you’re not going to see me advertising it on that platform. And I highly doubt that it’s the most accessible music for people. But I want this to kind of be going to use the term again, a bit of a litmus test for other local bands to say no. You can do a self-release with your friends. You can create your own cassette tapes and sell them. You can record your own stuff and put it out and it can sound good or as good as you can make it.
And even if it does sound shit, maybe two EPs down the line is going to sound a hell of a lot better. I don’t know. There’s a lot of scope for it. I want to tour with it. It’s music made for live settings, but currently I’ve been so laser focused on getting it done and doing all of these things that I haven’t done before. Like I said, creating merchandise with my own hands. I’m doing a music video for it. I’m spending hours and hours every day at the moment writing up lyric videos for it and designing and editing them. I’ve been really busy with that. And so, after the release, I’d like to try and get some live shows going by the third quarter of the year. That would be really cool because at the moment I don’t necessarily have a band in mind. I just know that I want it to involve people that don’t look like me and sound like me. Because I feel like if I just had a load of people like that around me, then it would all just be people being angry about one thing and because of that, it wouldn’t have that all encompassing feeling that people from different backgrounds just venting their frustrations.
And, yeah, I feel like I’ve put this in a really poor way, basically. I just don’t want people who look and sound like me to kind of join in with the cacophony. I want them to be able to put their frustrations out there and maybe have input on future projects and stuff. The people that are in the band are a very important thing to me and something that I definitely want to take my time in considering.
All of the stuff that you have coming up and the fact that you’re doing it all by yourself is crazy.
Yeah, it’s a lot of work.
I’m not surprised. I wanted to ask this, I don’t want to simplify it too much, but this anger that you speak of, which kind of fuels a lot of the content and your sound, is that what initially got you into music, spoken word? Is that something that what kind of brought you in in the first place or is that just what’s keeping you there?
It’s a very good question. My whole experience with music starts, as a lot of people did, it’s what they grew up around listening to. So I grew up on my Nan and Granddad’s vinyls. I’ve actually got my grandad’s old vinyl player behind me and I grew up with their music with ZZ Top and Chuck Berry from my granddad and ABBA and Tina Turner from my Nan. But then I come home, and my mum was listening to Robbie Williams and The Prodigy and my dad was listening to Cypress Hill and Foo Fighters. So, a real mixed bag. And I loved all of it. And I think there have definitely been some very seminal moments within my life when it comes to music. Like, I have a vivid memory of my brother bringing home a copy of Suicide Season by Bring Me The Horizon and was just like, hey, listen to this. And I was like, okay, this is loud. I like this. The metal scene has done an awful lot for me, especially when it comes to, like I said, being an ex-sound engineer, local metal venues and just the grassroots scene and some of the bands I’ve worked with have really pushed me forward and inspired me to express energy in a really cool way.
Because a lot of music that I enjoy is just about the energy they express and the ability to kind of convert a negative feeling into a positive movement. And, yeah, I think when it comes to the anger, I want it to come across as not just someone mindlessly ranting, but someone, like, asking questions of what’s going on around them. And trying to figure stuff out. It’s not like an aimless kind of gargantuan being just like swatting at things. I want it to be much more pensive, I guess. And so, I guess the anger is kind of not necessarily what got me started or what keeps me here, but it’s more the current fuel. I can’t see myself ever writing love songs or anything. It’s not the way that I express. I think it would sound weird if the KC Project ever did a love song – that would sound very unhinged and borderline restraintment worthy.
Well, I think what you’re doing right now is definitely working. So I would say you don’t need to. I’d love to hear a little bit more about your plans for a music video if you can share them.
Yes, sure. I’m working with one of the guys that came out with us on tour guide called Rich Mukuze. He’s a fantastic photographer and I like using the people that I’ve always used for the photography and stuff. So main photographer that I use is a girl called Tatiana, and she’s great. And then I wanted to get Richard on board, having worked with him on the last tour, because I think he’s got kind of the vision and the niche movie appreciation to really bring across the sarcasm in the message of the song and stuff. It’s going to be for The Body, it’s going to come out with the single and I’m hoping it looks cool. I’m always worried with music videos whether my presence is actually going to detract from the overall quality of the video, but hopefully I don’t fuck it up.
I’m sure it will be fine. And I really liked what you were talking about with the vintage store merchandise – is sustainability something that you consider personally important?
The shirts that we’re going to be using, they’re not secondhand shirts. However, the equipment that we’re using is going to be based on making sure we extract 100% of what we can from the materials at our disposal and then making sure we then dispose of the said materials in as ethical a manner as possible. When it comes to the cassettes, they’ve actually just arrived. They arrived literally just before you called. They don’t have any stickers or anything on them yet, but they are made of 100% recycled materials, so I don’t know if it’s going to show up on the camera, but each one has these little imperfections, and that’s based off of them being entirely recycled. And that means that each one is one of a kind and each one’s kind of lived a life before it’s got the music on it, which I find really cool. Yeah, I’m just hoping that people enjoy all the stuff that I’m putting so much effort into. If I end up selling one cassette and then having 24 failures just sat around, I’m going to be a little bit pissed. It would be cool if people did get to enjoy them.
And then not only that, instead of making it just secondhand material, make it third hand, pass it to their friends, get them to listen to it. Get more people to buy Walkman, because God knows we need to start having some ways of listening to music and things that we enjoy that don’t have a screen attached. Because it’s the whole reason that I bought one of these in the 95 first place is because I was like, I go out on walks every day. I don’t want my phone on me all the time. Or else it’s just going to become a black hole from which it’s difficult to escape. What have I got in here at the moment? I’ve got Nirvana’s Nevermind in there for my walking a little bit.
Like I said, I want to get a bit of a counterculture going when it comes to how we digest music. I’ve been having issues recently with distributors and a lot of people don’t realise that not only do the listeners have to pay for things that they’re subscribed to in order to listen to the music, but artists also now have to pay yearly subscriptions in order to keep their money up. A load of places started putting their prices up without telling the artists and all of a sudden you’re paying £40 per EP per year. And it’s like, I’ve got three out for this project, I’ve got four singles out with other projects and no one else is putting money into it and it starts to haemorrhage. I’ve had to change distributors for that. But I’m just hoping that in the future, more and more local bands can start worrying less about being the next big thing or feeding the algorithm and more, just like, making friends in the industry, selling your own stuff and maintaining ownership.
Yeah, it’s like, way more organic. It feels like kind of we’re almost not taking a step back, but we’re channelling what we loved so much about the industry before.
Yeah, for sure. And even then the quality that you get from streaming services, like they’re sold as 16-bit, but that’s if you’ve got a steady connection. And even then, the differences between listening to vinyl or buying music off of Bandcamp, you can get the original 32-bit WAV that has all of the sound and audio quality on there, whereas you just don’t get that from streaming services, you get the convenience. Not everyone can afford to buy music and that’s entirely understandable and I think it’s fair enough for people to just continue on their subscription stuff, but at the same time, they are getting a lesser service for it than if they were to have their own physical copy, or if they were to actually own the stems rather than just rent them part-time.
We’re almost sold the idea that the streaming platforms are the superior kind of body, which makes people forget, particularly people that don’t take the initiative to look these things up. It’s really cool that artists are kind of bringing this to attention. I’d definitely say it’s become one of the most prevalent issues in the industry in the last five years – the relationship between streaming platforms and artists.
Yeah, 100%. I mean, it’s the same with a lot of things out there – they’ll always be pockets of people that will fall in love with the purest essence of things, whether it’s photography and shooting on film, because there’s like a certain romanticism to the way that things look on film. Instead of this is the new iPhone with the best camera yet and you can’t zoom into shit because the camera quality is so poor. Obviously it’s not accessible for everyone. But I think that there are people out there that have become complicit with the way that the music industry is and people need to start pushing back against it. And that’s kind of what I want to do with this project.
I completely agree.
