Described Spaces by KAMS

Kams is and has been, among other things, a space pilot, a father, a visual artist, a renegade technologist, and a musician with a long and – to say the very least – circuitous route through underground sound. He’s painted graffiti walls and choreographed dance companies, designed carparks and flown to the moon – from the Fens via Leicester and Southeast London to the cosmos, he has seen things. He’s seen ships on fire off the Eye Roundabout Peterborough, and C-beams glittering off the stage at the Big Chill. He’s witnessed, and we do not say this lightly, the pixellation of Penge.

His unique way with a singing acid line and chattery funk, which is all over the beautiful Described Spaces album for Mighty Force, dates all the way back to late 90s promotions of fully weird electronica backroom meltdown in Leicester. Here he grew his doctrine that raving could be radical and experimental music could be fun. These liquified nights in turn fed into his early 00s excursions in the duo Normal Position, who supported Plaid, Clark, Gravenhurst, Isan, the late Mira Calix and more.

As Kams he released with the notorious early web label Hippocamp, and at the end of the 00s he formed another duo, Samuel And The Dragon. This was gloriously/catastrophically short-lived, but got him working with Ninja Tune and in the studio with the mighty Nico Muhly and resulted in a couple of still-stunning releases. Sporadic releases as Kams, and remixes under his Ry9n guise for labels like Big Dada and Africa7, followed – then at the turn of the 20s he entered his most prolific period yet.

And that radiant flush of activity – founding the Metr Music label with Cephas Teom, donning multiple new aliases, collabbing with the great Richard Norris – is what brings us to Described Spaces. This is the sound of a lifer, of a being who bleeds analogue synthesis, whose synapses are MIDI cables, and whose dreams are full of freaky beings who snuck into his head in a party in 1997 and haven’t stopped dancing there since. It’s a document of a life wonkily but well lived, and of bleeps and bloops as a thriving folk culture.

Mighty Force was a record shop and label based in Exeter from 1990-95 when the label moved operations to London until 1999. After a 20 year hiatus, the label began releasing music again in July 2019. The Mighty Force Radio Show broadcasts on alternate Fridays 10pm-midnight GMT on https://roguestate.art

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