by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
There’s so much to love about London’s Reciprocate and their upcoming second album, Soul To Burn. Whether you’re familiar with the trio or the members’ previous efforts isn’t really important as their latest tends to favor immediacy. The tone is set within the record’s first 45 seconds, but Reciprocate are anything but stagnant. Soul To Burn is an album that definitely lends itself to the “hearing is believing” adage, so let’s preface the following with this: listen to the record. It’s streaming below. Go ahead and hit play now. Then if you want to read an earnest attempt of summing it up that will ultimately fall short, proceed to do so.
Due out on December 15th via Gringo Records (Sweet Williams, Order of the Toad, Grey Hairs), the band have dubbed the album’s sound as “alternative soul rock ‘n’ roll,” a description that feels oddly apt but will likely be misleading to most people. This ain’t Curtis Mayfield and it ain’t Funkadelic either, but the soul of Reciprocate’s music is still palpable, if more so in the songwriting itself than the actual sound. They’re playing with a joyous sort of freedom, painting in vibrant colors with a feeling of peace amid the chaos.
Stef Kett and Henri Grime have spent the past fifteen years creating music that pushes boundaries - first with Shield Your Eyes and now as Reciprocate (together with bassist Marion Andrau) - experimenting with post-hardcore, prog rock, volcanic lo-fi, and blues in a way that’s equal parts astounding and raw. The human performance aspect of their music has always been essential, often capturing their sound without a touch of polish, recording with skeletal set-ups in their early years that didn’t stretch far beyond a single mic placed in the center of the room. Miraculously, those Shield Your Eyes records sounded brilliant. For every complex surge of knotted riffs and clamoring drums, there was an against-all-odds clarity. Everything was felt, nothing was muddy.
It’s that sense of impossible clarity that Kett, Grime, and Andrau bring with them to Reciprocate, wherever they go, they seem to go together with an understated ease. While the production aesthetics have certainly improved, Soul To Burn, is a wild ride of high voltage rock ‘n’ roll grooves and swaggering hooks, but it’s also inherently complex, the sound in a constant state of contortion. These songs are accessible from first glance (“Rhodia” is a smash hit), with dissonant vibrations and riotous rhythmic shifts bending to create something casually digestible. There’s beauty (“Ressypressocate”), there’s time bending pop carnage (“Newhaven Dieppe”), and it all feels like magic as we’re left wondering how they did the trick.
While Stef Kett’s sinewy guitar leads and signature vocals set the tone (one of increasing disorientation the further you focus in on the guitars), the core of their sound resides on Henri Grime’s dexterous drums. His sense for expanding and collapsing rhythms, shifting structures, rampaging and pulling back in equal measure is genuinely incredible, his playing sitting somewhere between free jazz skittering and prog rock finesse. The songs explode and recede in a way that almost feels improvised (“Self Regarding Floor Sweepings”), moving with the drums as they swing and fall behind the beat, scrambling in every direction. Grime is able to glue everything together, and there’s a lot of gluing necessary. From the bluesy psych drift of “Pissed Hymn” and the mathy convulsions of the title track to the sauntering meditations of “Alsabus” and silky detachment of “Sleevetugger,” it’s clear that Reciprocate aren’t following a singular sound but rather a cohesive feeling, a wonky atmosphere of open joy, the trio coming together to unravel in shapeshifting bliss.
The band will celebrate the album’s release on December 2nd in London at the King Alfred Phoenix Theatre together with Skip Action and Winnaretta, followed by dates in 2024. Stream the album and check out their upcoming shows below.
TOUR DATES:
02/12 - London, UK @ King Alfred Phoenix Theatre
18/01 - Oxford, UK @ The Library
19/01 - Sowerby Bridge, UK @ Puzzle Hall
20/01 - Birmingham, UK @ The Station
21/01 - Brighton, UK @ The Hope
21/02 - Zaragoza, ES @ Las Armas
22/02 - Benicarlo, ES @ Plug In The Gear
23/02 - Valencia, ES @ La Residencia
24/02 - Málaga, ES @ CSA Las Vegas