Spotlight On... KuleeAngee

Last November, KuleeAngee slipped into our consciousness with their bubbling, baggy and dancefloor bothering debut single, Animated Love. It wasn't long before we were asking when there might be more music from Glasgow's Keshav Kanabar and Edinburgh's Duncan Grant. We caught their live show at Sneaky Pete's in December, flecked with hints of Jungle, Confidence Man and Jagwar Ma among other touchpoints, and to say these two have potential would be an understatement.

Receiving its first play on BBC Radio 6Music this morning, their second single – the equally catchy and infectious Television – is out today. Loving what we've heard so far, we catch up with the pair to shine a spotlight on KuleeAngee and get to know them a little better ahead of what's looking set to be a busy year.

Can you start by telling us a bit about yourself? How did the two of you meet and what inspired you to start making music together?
We’re two mates who first and foremost are music fans and just love playing and creating. We knew each other for years before we actually became good pals, which happened when we started rehearsing for a mate's gig, which actually got cancelled cause COVID lockdown happened. But we kept in touch, started showing each other music and it was our joint love of Confidence Man and Oasis that inspired us to try making tunes together.

It was in the queue of a club that Duncan said he wanted to make some music with me (Kesh) and I had a wee studio space, and from literally the first session we knew that this was something. We knew we could take all those influences and really make something new with it.

In your music, I can hear shades of artists like Jungle, Confidence Man, and Jagwar Ma. Who/what would you say inspires your music practice?
We are big Jungle and Confidence Man fans! We found Confidence Man’s first album especially inspiring. It felt like it was guitar music without the guitars and had this attitude that they really didn’t give a fuck, but not in an angsty or angry way. Young Fathers have also been a massive influence to us. Firstly, no one sounds like them and they have created such a lane for themselves, but also they pull together some of our favourite parts of music and create something totally unique to them whilst having banging tunes that are catchy as fuck.

We actually grew up both being quite big blues fans. And I think that sludgy push 'n' pull kinda groove has really found its way into our tunes. Really we love groove-based music; if it can get us moving we like it. I’d say that is what inspires us; love a song with good lyrics that hits deep but it still needs to get your head nodding.

Your second single, Television is out today – but you actually released it as a demo on SoundCloud last year, racking up 60,000 streams, due to what is described in a press release as ‘an accident’. What happened there then?
Aww so... we had been writing tunes for a few months and were thinking 'right, let’s get a couple favourite demos on a private link to show some friends and maybe people we know in the “music industry”'. Kesh went to upload it but didnae see the button to make it private, I (Duncan) had a mini freakout internally but Kesh said “fuck it, let’s leave it up” and I chose to embrace his "let it be" attitude. Then over the next week it got a few streams, over the next month a few more until it ended up with over 60k and people were adding it to their own SoundCloud playlists and commenting on it! It came at a time where we weren’t doing any gigs so to have this reaction to a demo was special. Such a class wee confidence booster that we were onto something with our band, that our sound and vibe was connecting with people. We were like, "fucking hell, that’s mad, we have a fan in Japan!"

And can you tell us a little bit more about Television and what it’s about?
It’s a fun, groovy as fuck tune combining our alt-electronic influences with Britpop euphoria. It’s about how we as human beings resort to mind-numbing TV/media for escapism from whatever is getting us down. It’s guaranteed to get you moving but also you can dig into these lyrics and find out a bit more about the kind of worries that rattle around our heads, you might even find it relatable. Television was actually the fourth song we ever wrote together.

You’re due to release your debut EP later in the year too. At this stage, what are you able to tell us about the release?
Just that we’ve got a few more belting tunes for you! We’re showing people the range of our influences with these tunes so there should be something for everyone, but also not taking the piss, we’re keeping it short and sweet. No 15-minute experimental drum machine odysseys.

And what does the rest of the year look like for KuleeAngee?
It’s early days yet but we’re lining up some supports and festivals. We’ll be playing shows around the UK and a couple in Europe. But really we’re just buzzin' to get more tunes out, we’ve got a bunch lined up which we’ve seen such a positive reaction to at the live shows we’ve done so far, can’t wait. We’ll be supporting Antony Szmierek at Saint Luke’s on 9 March, and Melin Melyn on their UK tour. Depending on how the year goes, we may even have some more Glasgow and Edinburgh headline shows lined up.

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Television is out now

Follow KuleeAngee on Instagram at @kuleeangee