Kassie Krut Announces Self Titled EP, Shares "Racing Man"
Today, Kassie Krut announce their debut self-titled EP, out December 6th via Fire Talk Records, and present its lead single/video, “Racing Man.” On their self-produced, self-titled debut, Kassie Krut’s approach is deceptively simple. With a constrained palette and a penchant for repetition, they find a world of opposing textures and timbres: electric and acoustic, synthetic and organic, terrestrial and celestial. Their scratch-made sounds melodize the hard-edged noise of daily life — car alarms, notification chimes, dial tones, feedback— against stutter-step high hats, pots-and-pans percussion, and tensile bass tones that thrash around like a rubber ball.
Lead single “Racing Man” is swaggering and smeared. Splicing Eve Alpert’s icy vocals alongside those of Kasra Kurt, “Racing Man” smudges starkness and filth. Following the previously shared“Reckless” — a “a clinking, clattering affair” (The Needle Drop) released to a wealth of praise from Stereogum, Nina Protocol, So Young and more — “Racing Man” is presented alongside a video helmed by Veronika Romhany.
Kurt and Alpert spent their teenage years in London, whose streets and airwaves were suffused with the sounds of dub, grime, and garage. Those early encounters were soon joined by regard for SOPHIE’s candied hyperpop, Tirzah’s attitudinal minimalism, and DAF’s turn to electronic body music. Together the duo were two parts of Philadelphia rock institution Palm, who called it quits in 2023 after ten years and three-acclaimed albums. Following the split, Kurt decamped to New York with Alpert and Matt Anderegg, who produced Palm’s final record. Playing together (in person and sometimes remotely), the longtime friends and collaborators christened the current three-headed incarnation of Kassie Krut.
Alpert’s vocals are brash, triumphal, and mordacious. On “Reckless,” she sing-spells the name of the band in the style of a playground taunt, satirizing the lexicon of pop egoism while acknowledging its affective power. Here and elsewhere, the lyric sheet holds a series of affirmations equally suited for tonight’s disco or tomorrow morning’s mirror, though with odd artifacts of lived specificity. Even as the sounds of impossible instruments are labored over in minute detail, the group’s delivery maintains an air of detached playfulness, deploying a metallic, fun-house-mirror reflection of the contemporary pop idiom.
After years of twisting rock instrumentation into unknown shapes, the first release by Kassie Krut represents a transformative refocusing of energies. These tracks evince the kind of wisdom that only comes from experience—and the kind of experience that can only be scored by new sounds, still glittering with the metal filings of their making.
