Band: Kinzki
Album title: Kinzki
Label: (own release)
Distributor: (own release)
Release date: 2008
Release: Promo cd-R

This Bonn/ Köln based German quartet’s 2008 demo came to us courtesy of the same promo agency that recently sent us a compilation of the two self-released albums of Smokebox (review posted 10 May), but without any accompanying info! Neither the band’s own website (kinzki.de) or MySpace page (myspace.com/kinzki) give away very much about this band’s history, but I’m happy to share what I found.

So, the band formed in 2005, consisting of Joerg, Steffen, Valentin and Christian, in a line-up including a keyboardist whom very occasionally also picks up the second guitar for a short passage (don’t ask me whom plays which instrument, because that info was kept a mystery as well). February 2006 saw the guys jump on a Bonn stage to play their debut live gig, and eventually they made this 9-track promo-CD (9 songs of which were sent to us on a cd-R, but with the track-list jumbled up a bit…so that I’m not even sure about three tracks’ titles) during 2008. With influences cited such as 90 Day Men, The Mars Volta, Muse, Motorpsycho, Jeff Buckley, Refused, Radiohead, Chris Whitley, Civil Defiance, Bloc Party, 31 Knots, dEUS(!), Foals, Ghinzu, The Police, The Whitest Boy Alive, Battles, and Polarkreis 18, the quartet go about dubbing their music “Megalomanic Rough-Pop”…but I do believe they meant “Melodramatic” there! The heading of their MySpace page mentions “Indie/Rock/Power Pop…and that’s more to the point, with the addition of that “melo…” thing on top!

There’s indeed an “emotional” touch to each and every song on the promo, but not in the “Emo” way. Rather think of the Sad Dad stylings of Radiohead in their beginning days! The lead singer really moàns through the lyrics, and the backing vocals follow suit! The music is on the calmer side for the most part, with the keyboards being played rather frequently in a piano mode, the other mode being slightly “synthetic” (but again on the calmer side) rather than “atmospheric” for the most part. The more “excited” song on the album is “I’m Just Broke”, an atmosphere created by a slightly more prominent bass being accompanied by synths in a same tonal modality! Guitarwize, you get a sorts of Progressive touch, not in a want for complexities, but in the repetition factor, done by a guitar which has the buttons on the distortion pedal open only half, except for the fleeting couple of subdued whaling guitar passages (the missing amount of which will prevent people from comparing this to any Shoegazer bands, I suppose). You might think I feel there’s not enough of those moments about, but overall I dó like what this band does véry much!

At the band’s MySpace, you’ll find three songs to listen to (including “Morning Machine”, which is not available on our cd-R copy), and if you’ll check into the band’s own website, you can listen to an additional one! Enough to tell you what these guys are about! They’re still looking for a label to put their music out onto, and my advice to them is that they try to get something in the UK (where the Sad Dad scene is still of some significance), rather than on the continent.

89/100

Tony.