March 08, 2007
Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat
Moody, melancholic folk music that grabs your head and your heart
Sometimes you find an album for the strangest reasons. I was looking through some new music and my eyes immediately lit on Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat. The name jumped out at me, and I had to check it out. I'm not really sure what I was expecting - although punk was definitely on the list. How surprised I was when it turned out to be folk music, albeit melancholy, angry, mystical, apocalyptic folk. Dark, brooding, cathartic folk music that owes more to Trent Reznor than Woody Guthrie. I listened to the whole album. Then I listened again.I gotta tell you, I was hooked. And every time I listened to it, I liked it more. I knew I had to tell all my little monk-lets about it, but as I looked for more info, I just couldn't find that much. Seems I had unearthed a true hidden gem. Well, I couldn't let it go, so I tracked down the man behind the band, and set up an interview. We spoke for 2 hours, and let me tell you, this guy is the real deal - a singer/songwriter who cares more about his music and his vision than he does about what you'll think about it, but without a trace of singer/songwriter arrogance.
Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat is the name of the primarily solo project of Belgian artist Stef Irritant. Stef started playing in punk bands, but for the last few years he has focused on this new path. Influenced heavily by bands such as Current 93 and Silver Mount Zion, his music also owes a large debt to the repetitive droning qualities of religious and shamanistic music. So it has "folkie" elements, but I'd call it more Experimental; a fusion of folk and shamanistic, with a touch of ambientness to it, and you can taste the punk roots as well. Confusing? Yeah it is, and that's what's glorious about it. It ain't the kind of thing you hear every day, thank the Monkey!
I asked Stef how he would classify his music, and he said that while he is comfortable with the folk label "I thinks nowadays there's a whole new generation of folk artists, like Devendra Banhart or Joanna Newsom and the good thing is that everybody is putting new directions in it, like noise or weird stuff. It has all been labeled new weird folk so that's maybe a distinction between the early 70's folk. In it's roots my music is still folk but with a lot of other thing in."
Of course, the issue of the name had to come up . . .
MB and now the question you must be sick of ny now - where does the name come from?
Stef The name just stands for 'Heretic', 'doing black magic' - in the middle ages, the templar knights were banned from European soil because they became too powerful for the Church, so the church decided to break their power by making them illegal. They were accused of kissing the anus of a black cat, so by doing black magic, being heretics. Many were burned at the stake, many fled to Scotland. That's the tale in short.
MB and you chose the name because . . . ?
Stef Because of my vision on the world, about how to make things better. I still believe in another (alternative) society, to speak with big words, but for now I'm only a heretic.
MB aaaaah - challenging the established order imposed by "the man"? I like it
Stef Yes, It's difficult to explain it, because all these words so quickly sound so hollow. I think you can speak of the established order, but everybody makes the same mistakes, we are too human, that's why I don't like to preach anymore. There are too many questions and too few answers.
MB spoken like a true artist!
Stef lol - Maybe I use these words for another lyric.
I wish I had room to share the entire interview with you, but I don't. I do want to give you a few quotes from Stef that I think speak volumes about his music and where it comes from:
To me it's all about the vibe; melancholy, passion and anger and trying to reach out to people. I like to be vague in lyrics, just offer things, open questions or ideas so that everybody can come up with an interpretation. Maybe there's the mystical thing.
Almost every song is just different ideas, pictures, ideologies, feelings intertwined and most of the time the story is too twisted too explain. To me, there are only three subject for (my) lyrics: love, death and banality. It's easy, everything that's not about love or death, feelings we all live with day to day is banal (but therefore not boring). Politics ... Banal things are just as important as the other two
A true renaissance artist, Stef is also learning to build instruments. He attends a conservatory where he is learning to build the Violin, hurdy gurdy and nyckelharpa.
You can check out a few of his tunes on his MySpace page, and after you've heard it you'll want to click on over to his label K-RAA-K and buy both of his two albums.