“Yenkl” is the first single from the KEOPE album ‘Triangulo’ released October 2019 on Bigamo Musik. The song got heavily inspired from KEOPE’s travels through Mexico in early 2019 and it’s a vivid picture of music making, during those hot and moisty nights in Bacalar, a town next the Belize border. KEOPE’s work is based on improvisation and the interplay of acoustic and electronic instruments. Spontaneity, a reduced tool-set around the electric guitar, drum machines and an analog modular-snthesizer, as well as the sole communication through music between the individuals, are key. Video by Liam Power
KEOPE is a duo living and working between Berlin and Presniča, having originally met for the first time in Santiago de Chile in 2005. The real adventure, however, only started in 2015 when they regrouped on the border between Italy and Slovenia, with the aim to record their debut album “Tropicalni” in an abandoned stone quarry.
Spontaneity and a stripped-back setup form the key elements of the project. Based around electric guitar, drum machines and an analog modular synthesizer, the band rely on communication through music to direct their performance. KEOPE also welcomes guest singers, instrumentalists and performers from an array of styles and cultural backgrounds.
In order to escape the constrictions of indoor recording studios and to enhance the contact with nature and the transcendent aspect of music, KEOPE create their art outdoors with a mobile recording studio set-up. Being in an open air space without the common sonic interferences results in a much wider, purer and more organic sound.
The single ‘Yenkl’ including a Trikk remix as well as a live-version is now digitally available :bigamo.bandcamp.com/album/yenkl
With the album “Triangulo”, which title celebrates the number three, KEOPE invited Alessandro Martini to participate in the creative process – a composer, singer and multi-instrumentalist who already featured on two songs of the “Tropicalni” album. Inspired by KEOPE’s most recent travels and performances through Mexico at the end of 2018, the atmosphere of “Triangulo” is hot and humid. If in “Saltamonte” they were staring at the jungle while being hit by the monsoon, here they have taken a long journey deep into it.
On this new album we can hear KEOPE’s very own signature sound consisting of bold grooves, deep basslines and evolving guitar-loops. We can also recognize classic western song structures, like stone buildings emerging from the forest’s mist. All the rest is just organic matter of leaves, flowers, monkeys and snakes.
