NEW MUSIC: Kitten Pyramid Koozy new album

A spectacular roller-coaster ride of experimental pop-prog! Featuring 36,000 bees, over a million Facebook views and one isolated doughnut. Released 2 April 2021 Through Flip Flop Records

On the 2 April 2021, experimental Burton-On-Trent pop-proggers Kitten Pyramid release ‘KOOZY!!’, their long-awaited follow up album to the acclaimed 2013 debut ‘Uh-Oh!’, which found fans across the UK’s cultural media landscape with Mojo rating it 4/5, Classic Rock 8/10, Prog Magazine calling it “… a gloriously strange musical roller-coaster ride” and “… an eclectic romp of a debut”. The Independent claimed “…if British psychedelia is your bag, this is your new favourite band” while The Guardian named them their Band Of The Day saying “Picasso could have been at the controls” and Q Magazine and Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch made them Track of the Day and Week respectively.

‘Uh-Oh!’ was supported with a tour of psychiatric hospitals as documented in The Guardian and was a show of support and empathy to those living with mental illness. The band’s singer, writer and creative driving force, Scott Milligan, dedicated it to his late uncle Jarek, a huge influence to Scott (“he taught me to zig when everyone else zagged”), and who lived with the condition his whole life.

… and so to, ‘KOOZY!!’…an album underpinned by the spirit of Scott’s mum, Yola, who lost a short battle with Covid in 2020. “As a nurse from the age of 16, my mum spent her entire life caring for people, only to be diagnosed with MS in her fifties,” explains Scott. “Her last years were spent slumped in a wheelchair, unable to do a single thing that she loved – other than eat cake and buy clothes. Yet, she was still able to laugh and remain strong, her typical attitude of ‘there’s always someone else worse-off’ prevailed.”

‘KOOZY!!’ is about life’s breathtaking, abstract beauty, balanced by almost perverse cruelty. “I love that, despite the elephant in the room, we can still marvel at swans made from towels, bees in jacuzzis and get pleasure from scoffing a Bounty bar.” All inspiration for ‘KOOZY!!’’s ten tracks.

So far, Kitten Pyramid’s new releases that appear on ‘KOOZY!!’ have been met with very much the same gusto as ‘Uh-Oh!’, and things are only just beginning…

Out of nowhere, the band released ‘Doughnuts’ (June 2020). Inspired by the first lockdown and perfectly summing it up, it was accompanied by a brilliant video that Scott Milligan shot during lockdown on his own with a drone, and features footage from Kitten Pyramid supporter, BBC Radio 6’s Tom Robinson – watch it here.

In October, a second single was released to help raise awareness and money for Age UK. ‘Aunty Mabel’ – in many ways, two tracks in one – was written to highlight how elderly people can feel in the modern world, and particularly during the pandemic with information overload and social distancing causing isolation, loneliness and mental stress. It found the support of national treasure Christopher Biggins who appears in the video as Aunty Mabel herself – watch it here

Then just before Christmas, ‘Koozy’ hit. The third single and title track of the album was inspired by album producer Nick Brine’s story of discovering 36,000 bees living in the jacuzzi of his new home in Spain. The result is an upbeat, high-energy, feel-good track that saw out the end of a terrible year and welcomed 2021 with the good feeling that the world needed… and Facebook responded, sharing the track’s video and song globally, racking up over a million views in weeks, with no sign of it slowing! – watch it here.

‘KOOZY!!’ was recorded in Rockfield Studios, Wales, and KONK in North London and has been produced by Nick Brine (Oasis, Beta Band, Super Furry Animals, Stone Roses), Christian Hardy and Nick Hemming. Musicians and singers include fellow Burtonians The Leisure Society alongside Scott’s father and his original band from the 60s, and all of Nick Brine’s family!

Nick explains “Kitten Pyramid are along the same lines as the Beta Band in their creativity and approach to recording, it’s refreshing.”

“This album is atonement for my propensity to waffle”, laughs Scott “Creatively I like to get to the point sharpish because I have the attention span of a Goldfish” Like his heroes The Beatles, he’s always favoured making entertaining pop but with a progressive ethic. As a result of setting his stall out in 2010 to not be bound to one genre, he’s said he now knows what the Kitten Pyramid sound is. “I’ve been open about my influences with ‘KOOZY!!’: Syd Barrett, Paul Simon, Beck, Talking Heads, Super Furry Animals and Nick Drake. But I think collectively it sounds like Kitten Pyramid, which is all I’ve ever wanted.”

In memory of Yola Marson

Tracklisting: