Picture an abandoned water park in the Balkans, or a cold winter afternoon on a beach; a dilapidated pier haunted by the mist of the sea breeze.
This is an introduction to the sound of Kino Motel, a band channeling by the melancholy of the open road and the sense of placelessness evoked from being constantly on the move.
Split between the musical interludes of Berlin and Melbourne, Kino Motel is about the mystery of traversal, whether that be emotional or physical. Their debut album Visions, released just this year and accompanied by a European tour, is specifically about those traversals.
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“It deals with some dark things and about the journeys that you don’t always get to choose. It is not necessarily a fun holiday,” says Rosa Mercedes, who plays and travels alongside fellow band member Ed Fraser.
“Some of the songs are about the death of loved ones or situations we’ve been in that we have to process. It’s a journey and it’s not rosy. It is encouraging you to go through this journey with a sense of open-mindedness.”
The music video for their single Blame Me For Free is especially reminiscent of this, showcasing a bittersweet recollection of images and abstracted life forms.“I am also a painter. Part of the background video is shot in Berlin and part of it is shot in Melbourne. It is filmed on an old camcorder we bought in Greece,” says Rosa.
“That song is a bittersweet song and I wanted to capture the changeable nature of life – changing form and moving from one element to the next, bringing to life these fairly brutal surroundings and seeing life evolve and change into different creatures and colours with all of these animated figures morphing into each other. That one is about some heavy topics, but it is also about seeing the beauty in it, that life is transient.”
Kino Motel’s signature dark, quirky sound is influenced by the global nature of the band. Drawing visual inspiration from brutalist architecture and vast, eerie landscapes and sonic inspiration from the local scenes in Melbourne and Berlin, the band mish-mashes styles to create something wholy original.
“I think it is sort of wistful, because you are always missing something, you are always longing for the other place when you are based in two places. You can hear the spaciousness in a lot of the songs. Songs like Sleeper are very evocative of wide open country Australia. Then there is after hours club-feel – the synths are very reminiscent of Berlin in that respect.”
Repeater, an early single from the album, fuses dark post-punk energy with scuzzy shoegaze, anchored by Rosa’s drawling voice – epic in its proportions and designed to be played loud and live. Headless is the perfect counterpart, a moody jaunt propelled forward by interplaying melodies and a lo-fi precussion pulse.
I ask Rosa if there is one place in particular that they would stay in given the chance. “We are a little bit obsessed with Albania. It is very beach-goth, a lot of abandoned structures on beaches. It has got this really special feeling.”
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