Katz Mulk have developed a reputation over the past few years for their mind-boggling live performances, infusing dance, sculpture and choreography with their slippery experimental electronic pop. As a group they celebrate the possibility of art as a tool for excavation; filtering inside worlds and contradictory ideas into a space of cohabitation.
For this release for Takuroku they share their most personal work yet, brought to life in a 4D maze where elements of pop, musique concrete, slanted electronics and oddball poetics slip and slide with one another in glorious technicolor.
"The first two tracks tracks, 'Postcard' and 'Scolding and Soothing', were sketched out for a work-in-progress residency, when all four of members of the group were invited by AME (Ryoko Akama & Stephen Harvey) to spend a week in their Dai Hall space in Huddersfield and put together a new performance. The residency was from the 27th January to 1st February 2020, so developing the work for live performance ground to a halt because of the pandemic. From there it turned into an exchange between me and Ben, and we've slowly worked on it over the last year. We started by raking over familiar ground, using samples that hadn't quite made it into previous work/performances, and from there it transformed into something new and exciting for us quite quickly. The music is shaped by our circumstances - recorded separately at home on headphones rather than in a practice space. Vocals were recorded in the bathroom after my daughter, Corra, had gone to bed. Our collaboration ebbed and flowed through the months as different aspects of our lives took over - work, parenting, exhaustion - and I think this shaped the music as well. Leaving space for it to breathe and ideas to percolate.
As for the words... I edited them together from my journal, which is composed of personal reflections and automatic writing, alongside email conversations with friends, postcards I sent to people and the odd line from DW Winnicott to create a college of intimacies and anecdotes attuned to the present."
- Ben Knight
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Cover photo by Stephen Harvey
