Kritters, Ride Audio ​ (released Jan 12, 2021) Soundcloud Bandcamp Youtube Spotify Apple Music Pandora

Multimedia Band photos Single artwork

Bio: Kirini O.K. and Rob Steadman met in July 2010 at the Mercury Lounge show of critically-acclaimed British ​ indie-folk band Stornoway (4AD/Cooking Vinyl). Rob was the band’s wunderkind drummer; Kirini, on summer break from studying history and politics at Oxford University, was in the audience. Kritters is their first joint creative undertaking, and began as an outgrowth of the poetry that Kirini has been writing for years. As an established visual artist, Kirini’s point of view shapes the aesthetic world of Kritters, from album art to photoshoots. Though Kirini and Rob are both classically trained musicians, they approach composition with a curiosity and abandon partially attributable to their mixed backgrounds: Kirini was born to Greek and German parents and raised in New York City before pursuing studies in the UK; Rob was raised in South Africa and the UK. Rob’s 11-year career as Stornoway’s drummer, beginning when he was just 16, saw him play on some of the world’s biggest stages. In Kritters he has found his own rhythm as both beat creator and music producer, writing drum parts and producing soundscapes without fealty to genre but rather to fulfill their expansive artistic vision.

Description: The track Ride contemplates the self-protective avoidance we do when we are in untenable situations: ​ ​ ​ escapism, rather than escape. Ride is the lead single off of Kritters’ upcoming EP, It’s a Trap, which ruminates on ​ ​ ​ ​ self-imposed isolation: fitting material for the lockdown conditions under which it was written in spring 2020. It’s a ​ Trap is about the constraints we accept in order to survive: the useful lies we tell, the faltering friendships we tend, ​ and the many ways in which we opt to shrink our lives simply because the world is a lot less scary if you make it really, really small. Written about her post-university life in the small city of Oxford, U.K., songwriter and lead vocalist Kirini O.K.’s songs grapple with the private torment of maintaining the pretense of happiness, and how threats lurk in all corners when one's happiness is fragile: even blue skies might be a trap. In the claustrophobic world of It’s a Trap, ​ ​ escape is hard to contemplate and even harder to achieve; to survive here is to dwell in escapist fantasies, to drive without destination and assiduously avoid.

Contact: [email protected] ​