KISSY SELL OUT “WILD ROMANCE” – 6 MAY SAN CITY HIGH RECORDS
aaamusic | On 27, Apr 2011
Buckle up – KISSY SELL OUT is well and truly back. The 12 blistering tracks of sophomore album ‘Wild Romance’ herald his resplendent return. From ballistic straight out the box club annihilators, to peak time radio hits, it’s a coming of age for this master-producer.
He’s only 25, but Kissy’s packed an awful lot into his short career to date. Whether he’s DJing to a packed out crowd, mixing avant garde new sounds on his weekly Radio One show, producing his own material or remixing for others, the results are always the same: Exhilarating. In the talent rich genre of electro, one name has always stood out as more forward thinking than the rest. Colchester-native Kissy Sell Out first exploded on to the scene with a series of technically ambitious remixes in 2006. His rework of Mark Ronson’s take on The Smith’s ‘Stop Me’, gained him particular kudos and was included in numerous compilations. It was enough to bring him to the attention of radio bosses, who offered the twenty-something design student a weekly slot on Radio One.
‘Wild Romance’ sees Kissy’s talents stretched in all directions, and the results are really impressive. He’s got the balance of huge club anthems like ‘Wild In the Warehouse’ perfectly offset with the pop sensibilities of ‘Homesick’ which features the lyrical waxings of close friend and comrade Oh Snap!. Two years after his debut album ‘Youth’, ‘Wild Romance’, showcases what Kissy has learnt in the interim. It retains the extroverted sound that he has become synonymous with, but is overall more confident. Twelve tracks of vicious beats, heart stopping breakdowns and fist-pumping drops. Kissy Sell Out has truly hit his stride.
Over at Radio One, he’s now over one hundred shows in, and he has used it as an opportunity to showcase his own technical abilities, presenting a new Kissy Klub mix each week, a section of the show made entirely of his exclusive remixes made especially for the show. Along with his fresh attitude to mixing records, his amiable persona continues to draw thousands upon thousands of new listeners to his late night slot week on week. Fans not only want to hear what at Kissy has made, but also what he has found; he is a champion of new talent, and regularly plays tracks sent to him by bedroom producers along with tracks from more established artists and record labels.
Kissy studied Graphic Design at St. Martin’s College of Art in London, where he used flyers he had seen for clubs as his main source of inspiration. Not long after graduating, he found himself in a recording studio, working on debut album ‘Youth’. He says: “I was swept off my feet, straight out of art college, thinking I’d be an artist or designer and suddenly I’m a buzzy, future of dance music character – it was frightening mixing that album.”
Many were charmed by the debut album, earning Kissy a legion of devoted fans. He toured with a live band, went to SXSW in Texas and all over Europe and Australia. When the tour ended he went back to DJing, and started to question if his dream job was the one for him. “It was a bit of an epiphany for me,” he says. “I was stood there in front of two decks, in front of thousands of people in a nightclub. I stood there and thought, ‘Is this all I do? Play a tune every three minutes?’” He took this as an opportunity to put the performance aspect of being in a band in to a DJ-set scenario, upping his game – and the number of decks to four. He has injected his live sets with a level of showmanship that thrill audiences and gain him new fans every time. “The crowd responds well, and so do I,” he says. Glastonbury 2010 saw him play a set to 10,000 people. He was astounded that so many people would choose to watch him when the festival’s line-up was so rich in talent. The next day a further 4,000 people came to see his second set, a phenomena he puts down to word of mouth spreading across the campsites.
When he returned to the studio to begin work on ‘Wild Romance’, there was one aspect of his career that Kissy took inspiration from – his radio show. In fact, he is sure that had he never been given the opportunity to be a weekly fixture national radio, this album would sound very different. “I weave in a lot of classical music and I think had I not done the radio show I wouldn’t have known how to weave that in to a dance track. I’m so used to that, so what I wanted to was combine what I was doing already – writing my own music, and playing all my own instruments and composing it all – and mix that with the classical influence.”
Kissy sums up, “The album is full of breakdowns and basslines. Every second drop is different. It’s me all over, which is cool. I like the idea of doing things that no one else is doing and being an innovator.”
Tracklisting:
1. Something Extraordinary
2. Turn It On feat. MC Cobra
3. Little Angel
4. Homesick feat. Oh Snap!
5. Twiggy
6. Wild In The Warehouse
7. Alison
8. Redrinkulous
9. Eternal
10. Wild Romance
11. Family
12. Alone On he Roof Top
