Kwes photo courtesy of Warp.
Kwes isn’t in a hurry to release his songs. The 25-year-old UK artist has been writing music for half of his life, yet he’s about to release only his second EP, Meantime (Warp), which he spent four years writing. This time and dedication is evident in the songs, which thoughtfully explore love and the human condition in colorful bursts of electronic pop. There’s an emotional patience in lyrics like, “Worthwhile love is a handful.” That extends to his songwriting approach as well. “My experiences don’t become songs until I’m out of them and into another,” he explains from his apartment in London. His diligence to write with insights in mind, rather than write to locate them, is another aspect that distinguishes him from other young musicians making futurist pop songs. “I’m looking for ways to explore the human condition,” he continues. “That’s a really good starting point for connecting with people and it’s also very inspiring to me to express how I’m feeling or how I feel about something.”
But Kwes doesn’t map out every aspect of his songs before he records them. The tracks on Meantime — out May 1 — rely just as much on feel as thought, which comes from the fact that he began his career as a producer, remixing and reworking material from the xx, Hot Chip, and Damon Albarn. “My mind is wandering all of the time,” he says. “Mixing is a completely intuitive thing. I’m happy to keep my composure while working on other people’s records but with my own stuff I can let loose a bit. I’m really fond of dissonance.” Kwes met with Albarn again, during a trip to the Republic of Congo to record an album for Oxfam in only five days. “I learned a lot from how he approaches things by believing in his ideas but not laboring over them too much,” he says, about collaborating with Albarn. “He’s a living legend and I think I’m going to be working with him in the future.” (Unfortunately he couldn’t reveal any more details about whatever they have cooking.)
You can hear Kwes’ sense of experimentation and spontaneity on “honey.,” where the musician manipulates his guitar chords to sound like a wind instrument, and tinkers with re-amping by feeding his recorded notes into his laptop from a speaker. The brassy textures lend a bitterness to the song, maintaining its optimism but preventing it from edging toward the overly sentimental. Personal, patient, but never overdone. “Because everything was so personal, I felt why try to make it all glossy?” he says. “Just give it to the people raw.”
Checkout “bashful.” below:
