KITO JEMPERE PRESENTS NEW ALBUM PART TIME CHAOS PART TIME CALMNESS
From a club-friendly chrysalid onto deploying his wings as a full-fledged pop artist in recent years, Saint Petersburg’s Kito Jempere has enjoyed an eclectic journey. His newest album, Part Time Chaos Part Time Calmness live-documents the chameleonic changes experienced this year between his life both as a musician and as a family man.
Better known for his work as a house producer which has earned him accolades from prominent dance music outlets throughout well over a decade of intense work both into and outwith the limelights, Kito has for all that never been focussed on writing solely discoid material, throwing as much effort over the years into multi-faceted parallel ventures, far and apart from strictly dance floor-oriented functionality. Yet, from this partition between various projects and mindsets, this is through a radical shift towards downtempo pop and out of the 4x4 loop that Kito got to fully assert himself as a musician, embracing the rejoicing variety of tone and mood of his tender loves, secret and not.
photography VLAD EVIOL
The movie I’ve never made but have the soundtrack for, Part Time Chaos Part Time Calmness is the fruit of change as much as change itself. A return to the simple means of his young self, his old trusty guitar from his late teens serving as the backbone to Killer Line and Love Myself But I Can’t Make It Love, and the natural development to last year’s Green Monster, which initiated these deep tectonic movements in Kito’s approach to his art, PTCPTC is an intimate trip down the kaleidoscope of his present life. Joined up by an impressive cast of artists, including Jimi Tenor, Adam Evald and Hard Ton, Kito didn’t just bin his old persona, he took it back to where it belongs.
From the low-slung emotional folk of the opener, Killer Line, to the eerie flamenco-jazz hybrid Before Music Dies, via the broken soulfulness of Put Love Into Your Heart and anthemic 80s balearic breaks meets coastal synthwave vibe of Sounds of Love, the album pulsates with a refreshingly genre-unbound vision. To the naive, laid-back sonic bokeh of Footsteps, succeeds the left-of-centre cinematic narrative of In The Countryside, which includes some fun nods to fictional brands taken from Tarantino’s imaginarium (Red Apple cigarettes) or other movies like High Fidelity, after Nick Hornby’s eponymous novel.
photography
(left) SERGEY VLASOV
(right) SERGEY GOORIN
Freed from gridlocked programming and impersonal tropes, PTCPTC showcases a wide array of songs, beats, grooves old and new, some dating back to 2018 and improvised sessions with his 9-people Kito Jempere Band, all of which were finished within the same timeframe and with this all-inclusive momentum in mind. Through the epic synths of Absent Ascent, in revamping the universal classic Over The Rainbow with Celebrine, on the appeasing ballad Shorespotting feat. Evald or in the waves-ready closing cut Lovers, Jempere tells a tale of hard-earned emancipation and life-affirming freedom.
We sat down with Kito Jempere for a Q&A about his creative journey, personal influences, and the unique storytelling that shaped his latest album, Part Time Chaos Part Time Calmness.
Congratulations on your new album, Part Time Chaos Part Time Calmness! How did your journey from house music to a more downtempo pop sound shape the album?
Thank you! To be honest, it was an unexpected journey to release this one such a short time after my previous work, Green Monster. Actually, the journey you’re asking about is a journey backwards. The album sounds much closer to the sounds I started with and was in love with from the first notes I heard in my life. House music was just a short, as I understand now, part of my life. I would say my house music years were only 2011–2015 at most. But still, it was the moment I got my wings flapping at full power: first radio airings, Palms Trax remix, playing in Chicago, Berlin, etc. Those years somehow shaped my international presence, and some people still think I’m a house or even deep house artist. I think it was because of the transformation from my disco moniker Saint Petersburg Disco Spin Club, which gave me my first solo records and festivals abroad and was very disco, to Kito Jempere with a debut record on Jimpster’s Freerange Records UK and the RA article on it and everything—it just shaped the start and the image. I never even listened to house music. I was always into rock, punk, indie, jazz, etc. I was never a house music fan, so I used house music as the easiest way musically; like if I put anything I love with, let’s say, a Sonic Youth influence into a 4x4 drum beat, it becomes house music. Over the years, I just polished that and excluded what was alien to me. So, Part Time Chaos Part Time Calmness and Green Monster, which came out in 2023, are two albums where I completely got rid of that house element. Now it’s pure music I love, music I have always been in love with, and music I want to keep dating. Pop music is the biggest thing in the world in terms of mind-blowing impact. I was always a pop music fan: c’mon, Nirvana is pop, Aphex Twin is pop, David Bowie is pop, Moby is pop… That’s what I was into, that’s what shaped me, and I want to transfer this knowledge into the future. I want to give someone I don’t know personally the option to hear a pop sound that isn’t obvious pop—it’s like failure pop, as Caroline Polachek and Daniel Lopatin once said. But this pop opens borders and stays out of pop prison. Now, do whatever you want; pop music is free now. That is what I tried to do on the album.
From house music to the folk, pop, jazz, and cinematic sound of PTCPTC, how do you navigate between such diverse musical styles?
I don’t navigate at all. I’m like a small ship floating completely in the dark. I hear sirens sing, I focus on that, then the storm comes… What can I do? Sometimes I sail straight into the black clouds; sometimes I try to outflank them. I combine things not because of knowledge; I combine them in a disknowledge style.
Basically, I don’t see them as folk, jazz, or anything else. For me, it's a pop melting pot where I take elements I love from music or any kind of inspiration, such as a forest walk or a movie watched on a plane. Genre elements work for a composer who is aware of them; I’m not. Somehow, with 20 years of music industry experience, I’ve managed not to focus on details but to hear the whole thing together from just a regular listener's perspective. I combine things until I hear something I was looking for but didn’t know where to find. I’m almost making prompts for my inner world AI, which helps me build unheard things for myself as a listener. That’s why my albums don’t get much attention or numbers; they’re just seeking a person like me to fulfill the emptiness or help with the research of unknown sound combinations that person was looking for.
photography SERGEY GOORIN
You’ve described the album as the movie I’ve never made but have the soundtrack for. Can you elaborate on that connection between your music and storytelling?
I must admit, the movies I love are sometimes as complicated as the music I love. They are still pop, but also have many inner levels. By saying the soundtrack thing, mainly it’s like you’re listening to an OST album without watching the movie. Nobody knows why Pearl Jam is going after Norah Jones if they haven’t watched the movie. Why there’s a hip-hop track and then an ambient one. Why we have this punk-rock opus for one minute and then a pop hit kicks in. Just try it. Go to the record shop and get a pop movie soundtrack—not a score, just with songs. The perfect combo is The Lost Highway soundtrack, but imagine you’ve never seen David’s masterpiece: you have David Bowie, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Nine Inch Nails, Barry Adamson, Angelo Badalamenti, and Rammstein on one album. It’s about storytelling. PTCPTC is storytelling that nobody knows, not even me.
I’m a big fan of movie titles in the time frame of the movie—opening titles in terms of music and visuals. Ones where you have a setting filmed: cars moving, people doing their things, you don’t yet understand if the main characters are among them or not, you don’t yet understand how it’s all connected with the movie world, with the plot, or if it will be important in the end or not. That’s how I make music and albums: chaotic. You have to listen till the end and find out what it was, or keep it open-ended.
You’ve kept an old guitar from your teenage years as the backbone of certain tracks. What significance does this instrument hold for you?
Well, to be honest, it’s the only personally owned string instrument I’ve ever had—ah, no, in my punk years, Fenders were sold for MPCs for some period, now I remember. Well, this guitar was special; it was my first guitar, but it’s custom-made, a combination of a performance acoustic guitar with a Fender Jaguar neck. I was a huge grunge fan, so I wanted to channel my rage into the instrument. I think it was in 9th grade—can you imagine that teenage feeling when you’re listening to Bleach and want to break something, break everything? So with this instrument, I made my first, second, third, and so on. I have a book somewhere with 400+ school songs I did back then.
The guitar was out of use for years; once I started my jazz/experimental band Uniquetunes, I used only synths and MPCs, and after watching my band colleagues, I thought I wasn’t a guitarist at all. They were. Only in 2022 did I get back to my guitar to record a couple of things for Green Monster. Anyway, this guitar shaped Part Time Chaos Part Time Calmness in full. It also went this way because I didn’t want to leave my house, and I don’t have a home studio now. So this was a choice to compose, produce, and record ideas on the go. For instance, Love Myself But I Can’t Make It Love was recorded in full in 15 minutes in the middle of a dinner with my wife, Anastasia. I just said, Wait a minute, went to the bedroom, and recorded the full thing.
How does balancing your life as a family man and musician impact the music you create
It works better for me. I’ve noticed that when everyone is at home—my 9-year-old son, my wife, and my dog—they can distract me from music, which makes my music more solid and ready than when I’m alone. When alone, I can’t just sit and record. When the house is full, I start doing things. It’s like being in calm and chaos at the same moment. That’s how my life is organised, and that’s how it affected the album, including the title.
As a musician based in Saint Petersburg, how has the local music scene influenced your sound or creative process? And are there any other influences that are significant to your creative process?
I would say I’m part-time based in Saint P. I have lots of projects in other cities, I travel and play a lot, plus I recently started working as a creative director for The Sandy Times Media, a Dubai, UAE-based project. We’re about to start an online radio and a party series with guests like Mainline Magic Orchestra from Spain, Eden Burns from New Zealand, my long-time friend Lipelis, and great locals, of course, like Hani J, Hassan Alwan, and Shadi Megallaa. We have a radio studio based in one of the city’s most significant record shops, FlipSide DXB, so I’m also building things there.
Home time is when I create. For instance, after some intense travelling—UAE, Cyprus, Italy, Netherlands, France, Switzerland—coming back home to sit and record felt wonderful. I think my music is my impressions of the world from my home window. This is how I get inspired and where I place my emotions. I place them only at home and in the music.
My influence is everything: good and bad food, people I meet along the way, road signs, movie cuts, old CD jewel cases, moist shoes, wet floors, palms, birch trees, oceans and seas, cats and dogs, film photography, and old fashion magazines. I think that’s why my music is so diverse and lost—the same as I am—but also it’s totally me. It’s vast and varied but at the same time, it’s super intimate.
What’s next for you after the release of PTCPTC? Any gigs, projects, or releases you’re excited about?
Uff! It’s only just out—a week ago. I think I want to try to do the opposite. Something that not only I can accept. Something for other people too…
Stream Part Time Chaos Part Time Calmness now here!