The Line Is A Curve

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Stripped back, with acoustic piano and melancholic strings, it showed the world that here was an artist with more than one string to their bow. And just three songs later, with an inspiring chorus of ‘move, I’ll fight you till I win’, we have the closest thing to a club banger that Kae has released so far.

All of this over one of the most carefully constructed beats of their career, each key change making the hairs on your arms stand up.Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Next to these, there are album highlights such as ‘More Pressure’ (with Kevin Abstract) and ‘Nothing To Prove’ that are the most pure Hip-Hop songs on any of Kae’s four albums so far, no longer blurring the lines between rap and spoken word. I Saw Light is an outstanding track, with its intimate feel creating an impression of Tempest and Chatten facing each other in an unfurnished room, lit only by a dim, bare bulb. It’s a few minutes of magic that sits in the middle of probably the most exciting album Kae has released so far. It’s hard to ignore that this is the first album that Kae has released since sharing with the world that they identify as non-binary.

I cannot say whether that has saved them or not, but it has led to the creation of a very good album, one that surprises and delights and evidences a clear musical progression.

It was followed by something of a left turn in the form of the Rick Rubin produced The Book Of Traps And Lessons; an album that marked a surprising, yet unexpectedly welcome, departure from the visceral intensity of Let Them Eat Chaos. Lianne La Havas proves to be an outstanding collaborator on No Prizes, her smouldering and soulful vocal perfectly contrasting with Tempest’s spoken word. Those moments when we are caught off guard; the occasions when the contrast between the music and voice is most stark. On 2019’s The Book of Traps and Lessons, their first Rubin-produced project, Carey reined in his sound, leaving more space for Tempest’s words. By contrast, some tracks on The Line Is A Curve do not succeed in drawing us in with quite the same impact, and that’s because they function in a fashion that is the polar opposite to both tracks discussed above.

Products shown, tagged or featured on YouTube by creators are sold by merchants and are subject to merchant's terms and conditions. It’ll take a lot for them (or anyone) to release an album that means as much to me as Let Them Eat Chaos, but in terms of pushing themselves forward and continuing to grow – A Line Is A Curve is perfection.

Their second album, Let Them Eat Chaos will go down as one of the most original albums of this millennium. C.'s Grian Chatten, Lianne La Havas and Confucius MC, the album is out now via American Recordings / Republic Records and was mastered at Abbey Road by Christian Wright. These lyrics seem to look back at Kae’s process of coming to terms with their true self, and the album’s focus on freedom, acceptance, and confidence shows them coming out of the other side. We encounter the contributions of artists who I love and admire, guest vocalists and instrumentalists, and so we defeat the sense of isolation felt in the opening track with a sense of deeply connected community. Evidence that this increased self-belief has seeped into their music can be found in the presence of the guests on A Line Is A Curve.