When: 7pm on Wednesday 28 November 2018
Where: Soup Kitchen, 31-33 Spear Street, Manchester M1 1DF

We’re delighted to be working with Kiran Leonard again!

Kiran Leonard has announced a brand new album Western Culture, released 19 October 2018 on Moshi Moshi. He has also shared its lead single, Paralysed Force.

Kiran Leonard: ‘Paralysed Force is about how insecurities you should settle within yourself often get transplanted onto other people you know. Projecting the question towards another allows you to shirk responsibility for your own wellbeing, but all this does is suspend the issue at hand, and prolong an inevitable falling back.

‘There’s also a sort of compulsiveness, a wanting to be suspended, that’s involved in it all, because sometimes it feels good not to have to think about yourself. I suppose the song’s about being caught between those two points – basically, that even if you know you’re being irresponsible (and possibly daft), there’s still a desire to give yourself up.’

The album Western Culture marks a huge sonic progression due, in part, to the involvement of his venerable live band (Andrew Cheetham on drums, Dave Rowe on bass and Dan Bridgewood-Hill on guitar, synth and violin) on record for the first time. It is also the first Kiran Leonard album to have been made in a professional studio.

‘It was nice not having to spend two-plus years recording an LP in drips in my front room,’ says Leonard. ‘It was mostly smashed out over nine days or so makes it a lot more focused than my long-ass records usually are. I think it’s both more accessible and more peculiar than my other records. There’s a nice Bon Jovi solo at the end of the seventh track.’

Kiran Leonard is a 22-year-old musician from Saddleworth, Greater Manchester. Debut album proper Bowler Hat Soup (2014) and follow-up Grapefruit (2016) were both recorded at home, with Kiran playing virtually every instrument himself. Derevaun Seraun (2017), a concept album in five movements inspired by five pieces of literature and arranged for piano, strings and voice, was an ambitious departure from his usual sound.

Tour support comes from Ubaldo. Ubaldo is one of the many monikers under which Andreu G. Serra, a multidisciplinary artist from Catalonia, makes music. ‘Ubaldo’ is for creating trembling ambient atmospheres and noisy luminous drones. Melancholic whisper, rhythm of water, the odd phrase mixed with hyperactive guitars. Ubaldo is now based in Brussels, though still active in the Iberian Peninsula underground. Serra has also played as, or with, Odd Labu, The Noise of Mutt, Bimbo Picasso, and Ensemble Topogràfic, combining contemporary dance and sound. He plays in the duo Or sobre Blau, sharing feedback with guitar wizard Kiran Leonard. In 2014 he founded the experimental DIY label Boira Discos.

Buy tickets now. Tickets are available from the bar (no booking fee), Vinyl Exchange, WeGotTickets.com, Ticketline.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.

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