Spotlight On... Kai Reesu

At this year’s Kelburn Garden Festival when Man of Moon brought out special guest, Glasgow-based LA rapper Jurnalist, for an as-yet-unreleased song, it was like a headrush. An unbelievable talent with unmatched, effortless flow, it was thrilling to then discover he was part of jazz/hip-hop outfit Kai Reesu. Led by Paul Copeland on keys, the band is completed by rhythm master Matt Sim on drums, Robert McArthur on guitar and bass, and saxophonists Harry Weir and Michael Butcher.

Together, the sextet are making music that genuinely feels fresh and unlike anything else coming out of Scotland right now. Their recent KOMPROMAT vol. i mixtape firmly cements them as serious ones to watch. Needless to say, we're excited for what's to come from Kai Reesu, so ahead of their forthcoming appearance at PITCH Scotland, Glasgow’s international conference of hip-hop and underground culture, we catch up with Paul Copeland and Matt Sim from the band to find out more.

Okay, first thing’s first, none of you are called Kai Reesu so I’d love to know more about the name, what it means and why you chose it for the band?
Paul Copeland: It's a loanword from Roviana – the native dialect of Robert’s mother, who hails from the Solomon Islands, and it means ‘Don’t Move’, or ‘One Who Doesn’t Move’. I believe the correct spelling is actually ‘kai risu’.

Our friend and close collaborator Callum Bentley (also the photographer for our press photos) spotted it as a good potential band name a decade ago, when Robert was regaling us with a story about his cousin. It always struck me as being evocative, playful and mystical, and the fact it harkens back to Robert’s heritage is nice too, since he's a core part of the band's sound and direction.

You released your first single, slop.i, in 2023, a mostly instrumental track beyond some muffled samples. That groove-led instrumental style continued into your debut EP, but on KOMPROMAT vol. i, rapper Jurnalist has joined the fold. I’d love to know more about how you all met and the evolution of the band; how it started vs how it’s going?
Matt Sim: Paul and I met playing in a covers band some 13-odd years ago. I met Robert through playing in a trad band roughly around the same time, and got him involved in a collective we were trying to spearhead at the time. It was really through our first proper band CROOQ that the Kai rhythm section trio was born. We met Harry and became friends and collaborators when CROOQ and his band AKU! supported Tom McGuire and the Brassholes back in 2018.

PC: Through a couple of offhand conversations with Harry I realised he was on exactly the same page musically as I am and so we’ve always loosely collaborated on projects together, until October of last year where we folded Harry more strongly into Kai Reesu. We’ve been writing together more and the vibe is flowing, which is an exciting development for KOMPROMAT vol. ii.

I met Jurnalist at GLITCH41 where he jumped up casually and absolutely killed it. We made arrangements to make something happen together, which didn’t transpire for a few months, and then our musical partnership started as a couple of ropey cypher-style appearances at The Jazz Bar and SJQ, around this time last year. It was really in the rehearsal room, when piecing together ideas and getting banter that we realised there was something special there. My beats are heavily inspired by the LA and Detroit beat scenes – Jurnalist himself is from LA, but is a rap expert who can draw from lots of different styles. The workflow has also always been seamless. There’s a lack of fear in being experimental and just having fun that works perfectly with Kai Reesu.

I’d love to know who/what inspires your music-making as a band and how do you bring your different influences together to make the Kai Reesu sound? KOMPROMAT sounds so fresh, so I’d love to know more about the ideas behind the record, how you pieced it together and what inspired its creation?
PC: There's really a lot of approaches to song creation occurring at any one time – a track like Detroit Cartier was more of a direct collaboration between myself and Jurnalist, whereas Broma is built around a riff that Robert played on guitar. Nuwu features a horn line that Harry wrote, and Riversong is built around drum ideas Matt came up with. Deluge and Vibe Cheq were written by me and arranged with Michael Butcher. Measures, Hood Sermon and Purposes combine pre-written bars with instrumentals.

Kai Reesu was always intended to be unapologetically about making the music we wanted to, so we try not to think too much about what we do in a way that could make it derivative or captured by an audience mirage. For example we’re currently working on more grime and boom-bap tunes whilst simultaneously working on a very techy, almost jazz-metal track. It's come from the collective Kai hive mind, so the trust is that it will make sense together, and if it doesn’t, sometimes contrast is cool too, and we really are just out here learning in the open. Mistakes are also fine.

KOMPROMAT is in a sense about embracing process and exploration – which is why the mixtape format works so well for the release. At the core, it's a descriptor of our collaboration with Jurnalist, which came together from old beats and old bars. Some of the tunes are Jurnalist’s bars, met descriptively with Kai Reesu instrumentals to solidify a sense of form, and others are Jurnalist meeting the instrumentals with certain bars. This is patterned with beats we made together, completely fresh. The outro tune – Remember / Alvvays svnny – is a beat that Matt, Robert and I have been playing together since we first met, and an old tune of Jurnalist’s, about touring and coming up as a musician in a difficult musical landscape. I think it's quite poetic and encapsulates the project .

You played Kelburn Garden Party and the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival this summer and are gearing up for a headline show at Sneaky Pete’s later this month – what can we expect from that headline slot at Sneaky’s?
PC: Kelburn and Edinburgh Jazz were very special events for us. Both in terms of the crowd, how they received the music, and how much those shows pushed us as a band. So for Sneaky Pete’s we really are bringing a fully-toured band sound back to central Edinburgh – honestly we’ve never sounded tighter as a unit. Expect the same blend of Latin-infused beats, fusion instrumentals and hard hitting bars – with a couple new tunes thrown in the mix. 

You’re also playing as part of Glasgow’s PITCH Scotland festival, opening their PITCH Showcases event at Drygate on the 28th – what are you most looking forward to about playing PITCH?
PC: For Kai, it's just going to be good to connect with a hip-hop audience and community. We are usually seen to be primarily a jazz band but the love for hip-hop here is deep and so to play to a crowd of hip-hop lovers is a thrilling thought. The facilitators of PITCH have been really kind to us and already helped us get some awesome opportunities under our belts.

Is there anyone else playing PITCH that you’d recommend people check out?
PC: Pan Amsterdam will be sick, as will Ruby Francis, Bawah and Aladji on the decks, but honestly the roster is crazy rich with talent; blessed to be a part of it.

And what does the rest of the year look like for Kai Reesu, what's next?
MS: We have a few tracks dropping from a recent live video session that are sounding and looking amazing!

PC: We’ve got a few more releases brewing – firstly an instrumental EP, including Riversong and a few others that have been played live multiple times but never quite cemented. [There are] a couple of very exciting releases with Cara Rose and Rebekah Naomi, and we’ll hopefully be finishing off KOMPROMAT vol. ii as well – if we don’t, you’ll surely hear some of it regardless. All of this is to say we’ll be in the studio a lot for the next few months!

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KOMPROMAT vol. i is out now; Kai Reesu play Sneaky Pete's, Edinburgh, 27 Aug; PITCH Scotland, Drygate, Glasgow, 28 Aug

Follow Kai Reesu on Instagram @kai_reesu
Find out more about PITCH Scotland at pitchscotland.com