ALL AROUND THE WORLD: K-X-P

Serving up a Finnish smörgåsbord of jagged electronic atmospheres with frontman Timo Kaukolampi.

Describing themselves as original-electronic-Motörhead-space-trance-spiritual-rock-meditation-freejazz-godz, Finland’s K-X-P aren’t your average act.

With the release of III (Part One), the trio – occasionally expanded to a quartet for live performances – are three albums into an acclaimed career during which they’ve cavorted chameleon-like through styles and genres with scant regard for convention. Tribal, jagged, icy, atmospheric, eerie, cosmic and pretty much everything in between, their music leaves the listener groping around for just one more adjective. That much of their material is improvised merely adds to its kaleidoscopic colour.

I wanted a group that would explore improvised structures…

“I’d been playing music for a few years,” explains frontman Timo Kaukolampi, “but there was a moment when I discovered bands like Neu! and Can and got really inspired by their way of making music. I wanted a group that would explore improvised structures. We basically went into the studio and started to record. The improvisation at the moment is more from the live shows. The songs on the album are themes we went back to where we doing stuff on stage that was super random and no-one knew what was going to happen. We fall between many genres and our life would be easier if we were simply psych, or prog, or techno or whatever. But I’ve chosen to create something new and it’s become almost like an addiction.”

As many of the progressive musicians of the 1970s discovered, however, improvising – especially on stage – can be a high risk strategy.

“It’s the structure of things that you make a record and then go out and play everything the same,” says Timo. “That can be really boring sometimes. I don’t know that we could do the music the same every night even if we wanted to. There’s a snowball thing with K-X-P where things tend to easily get out of hand, especially where we’re playing with two drummers. It’s very easy to get lost in an interesting way.”

As to what we can expect from their UK return this month, Timo employs some typically Finnish brevity. “Smoke, strobe lights, darkness and extreme volume – it’s gonna be pretty intense!”

For more information, visit: www.k-x-p.com.