K3:LU - Vol.II Cortis - LP - Vinyl

K3LU’s second album on his own imprint Creeping Curtain records gets its digital and vinyl release on September 20th.

The 8 track LP pays its respects to early Dance culture, Afrofunk, 80’s Soul, Dub and Jazz set against the backdrop of digital mutterings and acoustic pickings. A playfully created world of buckled samples, interwoven guitars, percussive atmospheres and dislocated voices all pieced together in his West Cork Studio.

With themes exploring legacy, loss, celestial intervention and human positivity. Music with optimism and hope created amidst a time of personal and global upheaval.
Contributors on the record include vocalist Senita Appiakorang (Shookra). Alex Sampson (Son Of Nowhere, Kneecap, Talos) and Robin Hopcraft (Soothsayers, Jerry Dammers Spatial AKA Orchestra).

Early work on the record was inspired by the unsettling state of the world - the aftermath of the ‘Big Freeze’ (pandemic), continued geopolitical chaos, globally inequality and closer to home the recent loss of his mother - Hatchett began to envision humanities need for an ‘’intervention” Maybe coming from another planet or cosmos..

“I was imagining a magnificent yet mechanically unstable being sent to earth to deliver glitchy AI generated guidance. Machine-learnt wisdom made up of all historys religious and spiritual teachings. Proclaiming upcycled self-help jargon, shamanic mutterings all prompted by the same messages we as humans had been proclaiming yet ignoring ourselves for millenia''

The project took an unexpected turn when in late 2022 Hatchett developed a problem with his right ear. A condition that escalated fast, severely affecting his hearing, his balance, his relationship to sound, and the wider world. Without any clear medical answers and faced with extreme sound sensitivity, intense tinnitus and enforced solitude he set off down the path of an ‘open to anything’ approach. An expansive list of alternative diets, treatments, therapies, and introspection. And it was within this process that he was able to re-enter the studio, finding new ways to work and slowly began to piece together the record with a new eye on the project and its intentions.

‘So what started out as a tongue in cheek comic book premise of alien intervention in humanitys spiralling decline, was infact more about my own unravelling personal life and although I was sadly not visited by a real robot from another dimension, I had now received this new inescapable situation that required deep intrspectoin. What messages had I been ignoring or what unused tools did I already possess to help better this situation and my life in general…’

‘And as I listen back to the mixes, I can hear where I have been with this thing.. trying to conjure up healing spaces or enviroments that had preveioulsy bought me joy. Banishing loneliness with these Imagined dance floors or parties. Constructed spiritual bigbands of friends and unknown other worldly musicians. Artificcailly created ensembles and connections that weren’t an option to me with my condition at the time. And despite the need for calm and peace in my life, I also needed to hear and feel these beats and basslines, the riffs and bleeps to feel hopeful about the future by being connected to my past. So yes there's the backdrop of loss, and loneliness but deliverd in a hopeful joyous, celebratory mash of noise, cultures and colour.

1. Proem 1.0 
2. Standing Ovation (Good People Of The World)
3. A Breath In Grayscale 
4. Still The Voices Come (feat. Son Of Nowhere) 
5. Knew No Know
6. And All Will Be Right With The World If We Just Learn How To Trust 
7. Let It Not Pale (feat. Senita Appiakorang)
8. Cortis