WRAPPING UP 2012 with Kiran Leonard

Tomorrow is the end of the world accordingly to the Mayans. So who better to answer some questions about 2012 than Kiran Leonard who has just released the 24 minute “The End Times” partly inspired by hearing of this predicted catastrophe aged 10. If the apocalypse does arrive tomorrow, it may not just be the ancient peoples of Mesoamerica who will feel justified.

When I wrote about Kiran Leonard’s "Bowler Hat Soup" back in March, I commented amongst other things on his attention-span, mainly due to the restless stylistic zig-zagging and multiple time signatures deployed on the album. Having now corresponded with Kiran (via last.fm), as well as a restless intelligent mind fizzying with ideas and sounds, I now see this is also matched with an acute sense of detail and control. So not only did he respond almost instantly, he was adamant that the punctuation, grammar and use of case in all his answers was exactly how he intended it, had been thoroughly checked and should not be changed.

So here are the unedited thoughts of a pre-apocalypse Kiran Leonard on his 2012 (and if we all do survive tomorrow he’ll be washing dishes in an Italian restaurant in Delph, where we are welcome to join him and, apparently, “the penne markotte is very tasty”).

What I will remember most about 2012 is...
this year was the first time a group of people started following what i was making rather than just my friends... i started PERFORMING and got in touch with a LABEL or two... it's been a very unassuming and minute crescendo but it's been satisfying

What should be forgotten about 2012...
don't forget anything and preach awareness + pleasure above all

The best gig I played was...
I PLAYED the CAREFULLY PLANNED FESTIVAL in october at the SOUP KITCHEN... it is a lovely venue... the first song we did was a grotesque punk version of WILD WALKS where my guitar was a quarter-tone out with everything else so i just beat the shit out of my strings so it could sound brutal and all the dissonances would no longer be discernible over the wall of noise... i yelled my face off like a phantom howler dog to the moon... everyone in the crowd was smiling but none of them came very close.... our saxophonist went on walkabout.... the band i play with were really encouraging and loud... it was the closest thing to a punk show we as a band, had ever done... we were under-rehearsed and nervous (at least i was)... we sounded terrible but it looked and felt brilliant





The best gig I saw was...
AT THE DRIVE-IN at leeds fest this year... surrounded by people who'd grown up with their music, all screaming the words to the songs... it was exhilarating...
it didn't even matter that OMAR wasn't into it because we were all aware that it wasn't 1998 anymore... chanbara was PHENOMENAL...

A record from 2012 that will be still be played in 10 years time?
DEATH GRIPS' THE MONEY STORE. one of the most incredible records of all time and i do not say that lightly... every lyric is poetic, scarring and fantastic...
they are the defining band of this decade, no question... nobody can reach their level or do what they're doing... i am a proud owner of their complete discography of 46 tracks (as far as i know.. anyone reading who has more hit me up somewhere... on my last.fm or something). they'll play this record till the end of civilization, never mind in 10 years time

And what can we look forward to in 2013 from Kiran Leonard?
in 2013, besides the vinyl pressing of the record i put out this year BOWLER HAT SOUP, i am planning a return to ELECTRONIC BEAT MUSIC and NOISY MUSIC. i will probably record approx. 4-5 HOURS of new material in 2013, with the intention of releasing every minute (though i may not succeed in releasing it all within the same year). though i will try to release the follow-up to bowler hat soup GRAPEFRUIT this year... and a beat album... there may also be a couple SPLITS in the making, more work for CASSETTE, lots of VISUAL media, small TOURS around the uk and parts of europe, LIVE albums, OUTTAKE comps.... BUSY YEAR HOPEFULLY. i'm looking forward to it. i think it will move faster than 2-0-1-2 did

Hearing "Bowler Hat Soup" for the first time and seeing Kiran Leonard play live were two of the unforgettable moments of this year for me – that and getting over his age and just concentrating on what a talent he is. 2013 certainly looks intriguingly busy. Hopefully it will mean he’ll be able to spend less of his time as a dishwasher. "Bowler Hat Soup" will be re-issued physically by Hand Of Glory.

A CAREFULLY PLANNED FESTIVAL Day One October 2012

If you’re going to start anywhere for a 100 band two day weekend festival, start big. Scotland’s Second Hand Marching Band today are a thirteen-piece ensemble who make a beautiful, stomping and boisterous noise in the basement of 2022nq. The band sound like a Caledonian collision of Beirut and Woodpigeon with added kick-drum clout. They switch from loud ecstatic unison and massed chanted choruses to just a lonely wandering accordionist and heartbreak. What a marvellous start to A Carefully Planned Festival #2. Send their first EP to someone for free here.



Sitting with one leg crossed over the other in the back room of the Castle Hotel, Tekla Szerszynska played a set of entrancing songs about pitter-patter rain, Jekyll minds and parks. Her chiming harp-like guitar picking and halting vocals were much more grounded than it sounds; a song about “dig your head out of the clouds” summed up her more down-to-earth approach neatly.

After many failed attempts today was the day I finally saw Plank! live. And they did not disappoint – despite viewing from the back of a packed Soup Kitchen. There was a static back projection of the festival poster and no lighting changes so on the face of it ‘not much going on’ but the muscular prog-pop instrumentals rippled and switched direction with a ferocious precision. Final song ‘La Luna’ with swift fingered fretwork was particularly immense.

Then to Kraak to see Anguish Sandwich. What a treat. Lofi slacker rock and surf scuzziness meets Television Personalities in an energetic, shouty embrace with great, pummelling drumming. The Northampton trio were selling their debut EP: “what else is it about?” asked a doleful Chris East. It was immediately bought and carried around for the rest of the day; an inconvenience worth putting up with. It’s ace.



In the Castle Hotel I caught the end of Rubicava from Kidderminster (“we say Birmingham because no-one’s ever heard of Kidderminster”) before seeing late addition to the bill Songs For Walter. Laurie Hulme’s tribute to the lives of his grand-parents, domestic and romantic, was here performed as a three-piece and with four songs not on this year’s “Meet Me At The Empire” EP. The newer ones, including a single released in November ‘Tougher Than A Soldier's Boots’, show his attentions moving away from his grand-parents but retaining their effortless charm.



“We’ve a 12 year old drummer normally but he’s in Paris”. Kiran Leonard’s band is frighteningly young – he’s a teenager himself – even without this revelation. A lack of years is no boundary to exploration though as his four-piece backing band and the twitchy Mr Leonard navigate an agitated set that makes Frank Zappa, Of Montreal and The Mars Volta look wanting in ideas. It includes a silk-wrapped saxophonist, kitchen utensil percussion, medal-giving and a dance performance that brings the audience to their knees. Insanely off-the-hook but with songs like ‘Port-Aine’ and ‘A Purpose’ the hyper-restless Kiran Leonard shows he can be emotionally devastating too. I filmed his solo rendition of ‘A Purpose’ but it was in near darkness. Instead go and listen to the version of his album “Bowler Hat Soup” performed on an 1898 American reed organ. Stunning. And Kiran Leonard is now working on a 25 minute song called ‘End Of Times’ about the apocalypse. Expect it before Christmas.





I caught a few songs from Leeds band Just Handshakes We’re British at Soup Kitchen: pleasing indie-pop songs but on this brief encounter they have not matured as much as I hoped since seeing them last January supporting Allo Darlin’. Maybe I need to listen some more - they went down very well with the dancing crowd.



Then to The Castle for Easter. Here bass-player Gavin joins Thomas Long on guitars with a new bass-player taking his place and ”we still have the same drummer Andrew”. Whatever the adjusted line-up, Easter are still fiercely loud and fiercely exciting. Such an intimate – and packed to the gills - venue adds to the intensity but that’s to take nothing away from the band – energetic holding-nothing-back playing from all concerned. Another highlight of the day.



Then to Free Swim’s debut North of England gig in the upstairs room of Gullivers. The band are on-stage and eager to start but soundman Dennis (how apt) is absent. The band’s foot-on-the-accelerator impatience is palpable and once out of the traps, on Dennis’s return, they are unstoppable. Heavy riffing for opener ‘The Eureka Moment’, foot on monitor theatrics, bass solos played by a giant panda and pumped-up playing by the freshly inked four-piece. The crowd has a who-are-they moment before embracing the Surrey band (“any Southerners in?”) whole-heartedly. At the end Free Swim are not allowed to leave without an encore (at a festival?!) – a cover of Lit’s ‘My Own Worst Enemy’ – and then finish with an ecstatic queue on stage of women wanting to have their photograph taken with Yolanda the Panda. Wild times.





Free Swim set list: The Eureka Moment / Croydon Fernandes / The Smell Of Pregnancy / I Want To Be A Mountaineer / Swooping Swoopily Like A Swooping Swooper / Scoring Bamboo Shoots / Rubix Rue / My Own Worst Enemy

Walton Hesse are a more subdued proposition after this noisy excitement but are no less engaging. How the Manchester-based six-piece are not signed to Loose Records or a similar Americana-friendly label is beyond me. Their restrained country-rock oozes quality. A great finish to an exceptional day.

I would have paid a tenner to see pretty much any of these bands. As it was, I paid £10 (early bird weekend price) for two whole days. Astonishing carefully planned value that beggars belief. Day two to follow.

KIRAN LEONARD Bowler Hat Soup

I don’t like mixtapes with that flow between songs seamlessly. I like to be jolted between track A and B, for there to be no doubt that one has stopped and the other started. I guess Kiran Leonard is the same. He has certainly sequenced the opening of his free-to-download album “Bowler Hat Soup” that way. ‘Dear Lincoln’ is a stuttering Of Montreal theatrical piano-bashing romp that handbrake-turns into ‘Brunswick Street’ an off-cut from Robert Wyatt as sung by Rufus Wainwright. It fades out with carnival pipe-organ into ‘Port-Ainé’, one of the highlights of this sprawling record, which sounds like a bucolic Antlers camping out in Portland, Oregon – not a home-recording from Dobcross, Oldham.

Port-Ainé by Kiran Leonard

And the shape-shifting continues even if tracks do start to segue more smoothly. ‘Smilin’ Morn’ might start off as seemingly innocuous piano balladry but ends up somewhere distinctly odder, filled with the ivory-bashing ire of Michael Gira or The Dresden Dolls. ‘Oakland Highball’ is a feisty cocktail of sombre intoning, accordion, Zappa wig-out and about five different time signatures in under two minutes. This is only five out of sixteen songs – other songs continue to move restlessly between blues, prog-pop, scuzz-rock and a myriad of other musical reference points. Kiran describes it as ‘densely packed’, noting that he plays over two dozen instruments on a record that took eighteen months to craft.

He’s not a first-timer when it comes to making music. His previous album ‘The Big Fish’ opened with a 26 minute ‘prog-jazz epic’. Before that he made electronic music under the name Pend Oreille. And apparently Kiran is still only 16 years old. SIXTEEN. He's either a hoaxer or a genius or possibly both. Either way ‘Bowler Hat Soup’ is an extraordinary achievement: complex, ambitious and with a maturity that finds many seasoned song-writers lacking. It combines the precocious and prolific output of the young Conor Oberst (remember, three Bright Eyes albums before he was 20) with the singular, wayward free-spiritedness of Jeff Mangum. Forget what Kiran Leonard does with mixtapes, it's his own music for all its erratic eccentricity that's important here. This album is not perfect, some editing and honing wouldn’t go amiss to tame the wilder excesses, but Jesus, what a talent.


The album finishes with ‘A Purpose’ performed on an 1898 American reed organ (where does a sixteen year old get these instruments?). It simply consists of the sombre, swelling tones of that organ and solitary voice. It recalls with sad fondness cross-country bike rides and drinking pop but also sings of the mysteries of life, contemporary societal breakdown (“I saw youths take substance / smashing our shelters / a lost generation”) and ultimately seeking a purpose in this world. It is deeply and mysteriously poignant, almost spiritual, and it moves me in ways I can't articulate. For all his energetic volatility, I think Kiran Leonard is well on the way to finding his purpose.

A Purpose by Kiran Leonard

Dear Lincoln by Kiran Leonard

Kiran Leonard Bowler Hat Soup [BUY]