One of the most exciting and crucial acts right now, Irish rap trio KNEECAP have today announced details of their debut album, ‘Fine Art’.
Released on Friday 14th June 2024 and produced by Toddla T, the 12-track album, which seamlessly merges Irish with English & satire with socially conscious lyrics, is fiercely intelligent, consistently hilarious and genuinely thought provoking. Theirs is a voice which comes screaming from the too-often deprived areas of the North of Ireland, speaking in a language which is too-often ignored.
The trio of Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap, and DJ Próvaí, who recently took this year’s Sundance Film Festival by storm with their self-titled Rich Peppiatt directed semi-biopic film starring Michael Fassbender, have today also shared the video for ‘Sick In The Head’, the latest track to be taken from the album.
The sound of the Wu Tang’s 36 Chambers hidden behind a doorway on the Falls Road, ’Sick In The Head’ features a chugging old school hip hop groove and dual voices frustrated at reaching the ends of both their overdrafts and their tethers.
Talking about the track, KNEECAP said:
“When working on the album we had periods of great productivity but also periods with a total lack of anything creatively. Towards the end of recording we hit a proper wall and this is the result. Our mental health was being tested and we said f*ck it it we’re doomed to mental torture we want to have some money to get through it. We’ve had enough of it while being broke round Belfast.”
• LISTEN TO ‘SICK IN THE HEAD’ • WATCH THE VIDEO •
The track is accompanied by a video, directed by Peadar Ó Goill.
Kneecap said about the video:
”We’re in the centre of a sweaty mosh pit mid-gig in a dark warehouse room. This pit represents emotional state, from f*cked up and chaotic to moments of clarity and calmness.The warehouse offers escape – from the mundane… for the marginalised.”
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• TRACKLIST • PRE-ORDER THE VINYL OR CD • RELEASED JUNE 14TH, 2024. •
When Mo Chara, Moglaí Bap and DJ Provaí – aka Belfast’s finest Kneecap – entered the studio with producer Toddla T in the summer of 2023, they quickly decided to scrap everything they had already prepared for the album they were about to record. Instead, they decided to build a pub together.
Built on a West Belfast side street, The Rutz is a community boozer, in that the entire community uses it. All human life is inside, either thriving, striving or skiving. There’s people just trying to get served at the bar or up on the stage performing; others are slumped in darkened corners or emerging bleary eyed and coke smeared from the toilets. Religious affiliations are irrelevant and the chatter is a intoxicating blur of English and Irish.
Although the pub is currently just a figment of the band’s imagination, all of the action on Kneecap’s exhilarating first album – Fine Art – takes place in The Rutz. Like the band themselves, Fine Art is fiercely intelligent, consistently hilarious and genuinely thought provoking. It’s genius is to immerse you in a world thus far unrepresented in modern music.
Across the record’s twelve tracks and the interconnecting moments between them (recorded by the band and friends including DJ Annie Mac), the pub comes to life vividly, providing the perfect backdrop for the cast of characters that join the dots throughout the album. From the moment the idea was born back in Toddla T’s studio, it was the obvious location to base the world of Kneecap in.
Following sold-out Irish, U.K. and U.S. shows at the end of last year, KNEECAP have announced further North American & U.K. tours, summer festival appearances and gigs at this year’s SXSW.
• US SPRING TOUR DATES ON SALE NOW •
• UK ‘FINE ART’ TOUR DATES • ON SALE THIS FRIDAY •
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