Track By Track: KÅRP – Radical You

Late last year we featured the elegiac and emotive Scandi sad banger sounds of Zero Heartbeat by KÅRP. We’ve been spinning the track, which features on their Radical You EP, in the label office a lot in the last few months, so we asked the band to give us the lowdown on the whole EP as part of our Track By Track feature.

Zero Heartbeat

The story of revenge is the oldest in the book. It’s puzzled humankind since forever. It probably has to do with the fact that it’s wrong. But fantasising about revenge is a different story, in our minds we can plan it to perfection as ugly as it is.

Greasy Makeup

This one is about a feeling we’ve carried for a while. It’s the feeling of living in a time of abandonment. It’s like we’ve abandoned ideals, hope and faith in the future. Everyone deals differently to being abandoned; some arm themselves for battle, while others go out in the rain and let tears run down their cheeks. Greasy Makeup is about that feeling.

K Lay on Your Hands

We’ve had a loving relationship with arpeggios since the very beginning. For us, it’s what riffs are to a guitar band. The core of it all. But like with all things that work in your favour, eventually, you want to destroy them. I guess it’s got to do with the wish to move into a new direction. In this track we succumbed to the old habit and let the arpeggios through the door again.

Nothing But Cold

Usually when we start working on a new tune there’s no mission behind it – but once the music unfolds you sorta start hearing elements in your personal artist database in the back of your head. They want to be found and play a part in your music. This time the element manifested itself in the form of the mighty Kate Bush that fell out of the shelf and spoke to us. She told us to add galloping toms and use her voice recordings as guidance for further explorations. Thank you, Kate.

You can download Radical You on the group’s Bandcamp page. The EP also streaming on Apple Music and Spotify, and Deezer. Their Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram socials are the places to go for updates on the duo, whose lush electronic tones will appeal to fans of Kite, Aurora, and The Knife.

Header photo by Ellika Henrikson