Katalina Kicks
Newcastle’s Trillians
Tuesday 9th May 2017
ROCK TRIO RELEASE NEW ALBUM 'VICES' - 12 MAY 2017
UK TOUR DATES ANNOUNCED
WATCH THE VIDEO FOR 'CUT IT UP' SINGLE
UK TOUR DATES ANNOUNCED
WATCH THE VIDEO FOR 'CUT IT UP' SINGLE
Katalina Kicks are: Ian George (vocals/guitar),
Nadia Silverstone (bass/backing vox),
Jase Wilkinson (drums/backing vox)
Purveyors of the finest in scuzzed-up rock'n'roll - Katalina Kicks - make their return with a thrilling new long-player 'Vices' and a feast of UK live dates this May.
Whetting appetites in the run up to the new album, the band accompany the announcement with the release of adrenaline-laced new single and featured track: 'Cut It Up'.
Watch the video for 'Cut It Up' here - https://youtu.be/yEFiHbpYkCk
The new album, Vices, presents Katalina Kicks at their loudest, scuzziest and most politically aggrieved yet. But then opening with a “cameo” from Donald Trump, how could it not be?
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| Katalina Kick Photo: Andrew Cotterill Photography |
Fans of the band will already be familiar with the Seattle-sized quake of teaser single 'Guns', a track written after watching Obama’s tearful reaction to the Sandy Hook school shooting. “It’s a song of despair,” frontman Ian George says of the track. “The most powerful man in the world, and even he can’t stop the gun madness in his own country. And then after the Paris attacks, Trump said that terrifying quote about if people had guns, less people would have been hurt. So we sampled that just to show the absurdity.”
Watch 'Guns' here - https://youtu.be/tZD5RO9AseM
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| Katalina Kicks Photo: Andrew Cotterill Photography |
In support of the new album, the band will be hitting the road for a series of UK dates this May (see below). Offering insight into what to expect from the new album and forthcoming tour frontman Ian George says: "We're so excited about this album, as it has a real mix of songs and flavours - from our trademark high octane punk rock to slightly more chilled and sophisticated tracks, but all played with the same attitude! After spending a fair amount of last year in the studio, we're really looking forward to getting on the road again and playing this new material to everyone."
Katalina Kicks are a London band as only a London band can be, three nomads from different points of the compass – a Southern soul-searcher, a Northern agitator and a South American vixen – whose desire to make music lured them first to the metropolis, and eventually each other. And, by birth, a quintessentially West London band, first fashioned in the clatter and fume of Shepherds Bush. Even if they’ve changed postcodes since, their sound – urgent, questioning, loud and fierce – has never lost the urban beat of W12.
Singer and guitarist Ian George is the last man standing from Katalina Kicks Mk I, once a punkish quartet who released an album named after their cat, stray moggy “Montague Rotter”, and found themselves accidentally sound-tracking a straight-to-DVD horror Z-Movie directed by the son of James Bond. “I’ve never watched it!” grimaces Ian of Jason Connery’s 51. “When we started we had an American publishing deal and that was one of the weird things that came of it. We got all of £3.50 for having a song in a crap film. So it’s taken a long time, and a lot of changing line-ups to get to where Katalina Kicks are today. I’ve always believed in the band. It’s just been a waiting game to find the right people.”
One such right person finally surfaced in the beard and flexing tattoos of Jase Wilkinson. Not so much born as smelted in Manchester, as a kid he’d wait for his stepdad to leave the house so he could sneak a listen of his Led Zeppelin vinyl. “And getting a whopping for it when he came home and found out.” Between John Bonham and hip hop he fell in love with the drums, later moving to London, instinctively settling westwards off Ladbroke Grove, first blurring his limbs behind the kit of a ska band until a chance audition with Katalina Kicks. Which he failed. “Because he wore these dodgy heavy metal black leather fingerless gloves,” laughs Ian. “My first thought was, no way am I having THOSE in the band. But then a few weeks later I called him back. Before Jase our drummers had mostly been arseholes, mentally ill, drug addicts and glory-grabbers. He was none of those. He had the passion and the power I’d always needed… so long as he kept those bloody gloves off!”
In the meantime bassists continued to fall by the wayside until a mysterious Brazilian answered their situation vacant ad. Nadia Silverstone left her home city of Curitiba for London the day after her eighteenth birthday. Her one goal: to join a London rock band.
Katalina Kicks were the only one to ever give her an audition. Their first surprise was Nadia’s look: a slinky, silver-bobbed creature with exotic Italian/Japanese features, less Girl From Ipanema than Girl From Outer Space. The second was Nadia’s style: a bass that was both forceful and fluid, twisting in the lull between Jase’s rhythmic thunder. That plane ticket wasn’t spent in vain. Katalina Kicks have been a formidable core trio ever since, occasionally swelling their ranks to four with an extra guitarist for added live ferocity. Together they play simple and direct heavy garage rock’n’roll: power chords and pummelling rhythms, fuzzy guitar and throbbing bass, big riffs and shouted choruses, pin-balling between grunge, punk and heavy blues. In Ian they’ve also a songwriter who can’t help but use his band as a platform to air his anxieties about the world around him. “I would never pigeonhole us as a ‘political band’,” he explains. “I just write about things I see and hear that upset me. We’re not preaching at anyone or trying to change the world. We’re just saying these are the things that affect and worry us. They’re too important not to talk about, whether in conversation or in rock’n’roll. That’s all we try to do.”
In addition, Katalina Kicks are delighted to announce they will be teaming up with fashion giant Paul Smith to bring you a series of intimate acoustic in-store sets at certain UK branches including Nottingham, Leeds, Birmingham, London and Amsterdam to coincide the tour (dates as below, times tbc). Speaking about the Paul Smith acoustic sets ahead, Ian says: "We started breaking our songs down to do some acoustic shows late last year and that was a real challenge, but they went down really well, surprising many people! So that element of the tour playing the Paul Smith shows should be great too to give people a flavour of our slightly more chilled (but still fun and energetic!) side."
KATALINA KICKS WILL PLAY THE FOLLOWING DATES IN 2017....
4th May - The Spinning Top, Stockport
5th May - Scruffy Murphys, Birmingham
( + Paul Smith In Store earlier in the day at Birmingham branch)
9th May - Trillians, Newcastle
10th May - O2 Academy 2, Islington, London (launch party)
( + Paul Smith In Store earlier in the day at London branch)
12th May - The Shed, Leicester
( + Paul Smith In Store earlier in the day at Nottingham branch)
13th May - Retro Bar, Manchester
( + Paul Smith In Store earlier in the day at Manchester branch)
14th May - West Street Live, Sheffield
( + Paul Smith In Store earlier in the day at Leeds branch)
16th May - Horns, Watford
Fri 19th May - Sofar, Amsterdam
Sat 20th May - 'Beardsterdam' Festival, Het Sieraad, Amsterdam
Sun 21st May - The Waterhole, Amsterdam
The ten tracks that make up new album Vices are reassurance to anyone fearing that contemporary rock may have lost its conscience. In their musical echoes of the past, Katalina Kicks speak volumes about our present. A volume the world needs turning up to louder than ever....
'VICES' - THE NEW ALBUM WILL BE RELEASED 12 MAY 2017
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