When listening to Kins some of the sounds might be strangely familiar, you’d probably be recognising Thomas Savage on vocals.
Before Kins, Savage was one of the core songwriters in Melbourne group Oh Mercy. Savage left the band at the end of last year to stretch his musical wings and write songs for something that didn’t have to fit into what audiences expected to hear from Oh Mercy. The result is the Kins mini album, and it’s good. The band are only hanging around in the country until August, so you’ve got a limited time to catch them live before they resettle themselves in the UK for a while.
Music Feeds: How did Kins come about?
Thomas Savage: Kins came about through my need to explore my own writing without inhibition. I couldn’t avoid being conscious of what OM needed to sound like in my writing. This was great in some ways; I was able to (without knowing it) refine and focus on something. Though this attitude began to frustrate me, which led Kins to be shaped by a lack of boundaries. The negative half of this is the risk or poor taste, but the positive half is artistic and musical exploration.
MF: You’ve released a mini album Dancing Back And Forth Covered In Whipped Cream, it’s an interesting title; where did it come from? Why did you guys decide to do a mini album instead of an EP or LP like most bands?
TS: We were aiming for an album, but it fell short. The songs we were making took a sudden leap away from the songs that shaped the Mini-LP, it became clear that the Mini-LP fell into its own category, topically, musically.
The focus is on the imbalance of aspects that make up humanity, the transition phase that mankind is currently struggling with. What we view today as to be ‘inhumane’ behaviour, are the same virtues that directed the evolution of man.
The title of the album comes from the imagination going a little wild at the pondering of what might cost $2000 in a brothel.
MF: You’ve described the recording as being done with “almost no money”; if you were signed to a major label and had a budget of $100k to record these songs, would you change the way any of it was done?
TS: We wanted to restrict the instrumentation to achieve the most successful use of space. None of us really understand how to load 50 tracks into a song and get it to sound good. I guess part of that $100k would pay for someone who does know how? I think it was important for us to start off this way to begin a gradual learning curve. Hopefully we’ll be able to go to town on our 3rd record and produce it ourselves.
MF: For a band with no money there are some pretty great film clips on your YouTube channel; who is behind the planning and making of those?
TS:Jac & I generally brainstorm, think up ideas, and then go and do them with our family camera. The great one of Lake Troposphere was done by our friend Will Hart.
MF: You guys are heading to the UK in August, how long are you there for and what exciting stuff have you got planned?
TS: Well, first off we’re going to Greece to meet up with our friend Desi, who is studying an aspect (i forget the title every time) of Biological Science and attending a seminar. We’re going to eat lots of food there, she speaks Greek, so she can help us order. After that, we [all of Kins] want to travel around northern Italy before heading back up to the UK to re-buy all of our equipment. But in the UK I think we’ll be cooking our own food…
Then begins the independent band method of travelling a lot, and playing a lot of shows wherever we can. We’re pretty happy about this approach because we’re all very much wanting to travel. We’ll take this here Mini-LP over with us and hopefully they like it!
MF: If Kins could curate ATP Festival in Melbourne, which artists would be included in your line up?
TS: The Removalists, Connan Mockasin, Lawrence Greenwood, Parades, ill’s’, Arcade Fire, The Beatles, Thom Yorke, Elvis Presley, Memphis Minnie, Blur, Runakuna Shamuni, Big Scary, Love of Diagrams, The Silents, Coldplay, Elliot Smith, Twin Shadow, Groove Armada, Television, Rage Against the Machine, Gorillaz, Seagull, Jimi Hendrix, Starfucker, Jay-Z, Interpol, Kylie Minogue, Michael Jackson, The Mint Chicks, Nick Drake, Phoenix, Q-Tip, Radiohead, The Vaudeville Smash.
Kins are performing at MUM on Friday 17th June
