Oh Kae, you’ve got our attention!
There’s a ferocious storm headed for Cork next month in the form of mesmerizing South London recording artist Kae Tempest who drops their new album ‘The Line Is A Curve', tomorrow.
Fresh off an appearance on US tv on ‘The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon’ performing new single ‘More Pressure’, Tempest is now on the road and will touch down on Leeside on 1 May.
The new album is their fourth to date and is what Tempest describes as a “communicative record”, influenced by the experience of touring their previous album, ‘The Book of Traps and Lessons’.
“It’s about letting go of shame, anxiety, isolation and falling instead into surrender. Embracing the cyclical nature of time, growth, love. This letting go can hopefully be felt across the record – in the musicality, the instrumentation, the lyricism, the delivery, the cover art – in the way it ends where it begins and begins where it ends,” explained Tempest.
It was important to Tempest this time around that their face appear on the album sleeve despite feeling desperately uncomfortable in the spotlight. In past releases, Tempest says they were often annoyed by the fact that, in order to put their work out, they had to put themselves out too.
“For the last couple of records I wanted to disappear completely from the album covers, the videos, the front-facing aspects of this industry. A lot of that was about my shame but I masked it behind a genuine desire for my work to speak for itself, without me up front, commodifying what felt so rare to me and sacred.
“But this time around, I understand it differently. I want people to feel welcomed into this record, by me, the person who made it, and I have let go of some of my airier concerns. I feel more grounded in what I’m trying to do, who I am as an artist and as a person and what I have to offer. I feel less shame in my body because I am not hiding from the world anymore.”
There was only one person Tempest wanted behind the camera for their new album’s artwork, and that was visionary German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans who is considered one of the most influential photographers working today.
“I wanted to show my face and I dreamed of it being Wolfgang Tillmans who took the portrait. I’ve loved his work for a long time. Years ago,at a major exhibition of his, I stood in front of his photographs in tears. I felt like he got it, the unsayable things were all there, being said. It was beautiful.
“I was honoured that he agreed to shoot me. I don’t think anyone has ever got me on camera the way he did. I think the vulnerability and strength of the cover portrait affirms the themes within the album,” said Tempest.
Artistically speaking, things have been going quite well for quite some time for Tempest with their work consistently getting the recognition it both deserves and demands. Their first two solo albums, ‘Everybody Down’ (2014) and ‘Let Them Eat Chaos’ (2017), were both nominated for the prestigious Mercury Prize.
Their third, ‘The Book of Traps and Lessons’ (2019), was shortlisted for an Ivor Novello Award for Best Album.
Alongside music, Tempest has released several poetry collections, a Sunday Times-bestselling novel ‘The Bricks that Built the Houses’ (2017) and the book-length essay ‘On Connection’ (2020). Their play ‘Paradise’ (2021) premiered at the National Theatre in London.
“Because I work in different forms, I think sometimes people have been confused about what it is they are supposed to be listening to when they listen to my records. In the past, I went so deep into narrative, plot, the creation of characters, that the result of my labours fell somewhere between concept album, long-form poem and dramatic monologue, which all made for what I would call a respectfully demanding listen.”