Nothing happens, then everything happens all at once. Last Friday I played a gig in Porto, and since my last show was over 12 years ago, it did feel kinda strange, but at the same time very good. My setlist consisted exclusively of unreleased songs I've been writing over the last few years, and that was a nice change from my old gigs where I would just improvise away. It does mean I made a bunch of mistakes, but the audience was very supportive and some people told me afterwards to keep the mistakes in (which is terrible advice). And then, as if it wasn't enough action, this coming Saturday my short animation "Home Delivery" will premiere at the Tiny Man fest, where it made it as part of the official selection. I'm pretty thrilled about this and I'm already going through all my bow ties to see which one I should wear on the night. (I will update this post with a link to the animation once it's public)
25/9/2024
Today I'm putting online "As Seen By A Lunarian With A Telescope", an album I'd released only as a CD back in August 2019. It's made of 10 short tracks I recorded at home between 2015 and 2018. For now it's only on my Bandcamp page, but it should trickle down to other worst plateforms in the coming days. Enjoy!
21/7/2023
Over the last couple of years I've been spending a lot of my time animating stuff, in 2D and in 3D and I've just finished doing a music video, which for the first time isn't for one of my own tracks but for the band KOS. You can, and should, go check it out here. It's pretty awesome if I may say so myself.
And for those interested, I've put up some behind the scene material here and here.
10/9/2022
This month marks exactly 20 years since I released my first album. After getting a CD burner and wasting a dozen of CD-Rs (back then burning a CD was still considered gambling), I took nine songs I'd made with my 4-track tape recorder, titled that "Demo", photocopied the cover and started selling it around. It's only a few years later, when someone asked me if I'd sent it to any record labels that I realised that that's what one does with a demo. Hopefully I'll get around to do it in the next few days. I remember selling quite a few copies back then and I'd like to think that today, some of them are still around, swinging happily in the wind, hanging in gardens and fields, spending their days scarring the shit out of unsuspecting birds. But without a doubt, by now the majority of them are deep inside landfills, slowly leaking bisphenol A into our water supplies.
Listening to it now, my feelings go between the endearment of seeing a small toddler making his first steps and the horror of seeing him crash into angular furniture. If you're willing to look past the effortlessly lo-fi sound quality, to witness the english language being so rudely treated that at one point it just packs its stuff and leaves, and to go on some slightly dubious websites (what I like to call "The beige web") to download a bootleg copy, then you can judge for yourself.
30/3/2021
Hello again, it's me Pevin Kinel with another music video. You might think it's about time I focused on recording music instead of filming music videos, well gotcha! because this is actually a brand new song from my upcoming "acousticish" album, which should come out this year, at some point. I'm usually pretty good at coming up with nerve-racking album release dates and album titles that make you go "Gee, gotta get meself one of those!", but I've been kinda busy lately, so this time round you'll have to make do with a new song "Hemmed" and the music video I made for it with some friends.
9/8/2018
After some weeks sorting, editing, sorting some more and then tightening those first edits, my latest music video is finished. I made the controversial decision to make it available for free, digitally, in all its glorious black and white high definition. Simply drop me an email at the address at the bottom of this page and I'll send you the file.
For the best experience, I recommend you rent a projector and a big sound system. Alternatively you can organise a viewing at your local cinema. Finally, if none of this is very practical for you right now, you can watch it on
vimeo or
youtube.
12/8/2017
Remember 4 posts/years ago when I mentioned working on an animated music video for one of my songs? Well, animation takes forever and well... here's the first half: I See Everything (pt1).
In other video related news, this very website made an appearance here!
24/2/2017
A timely thought experiment: You are on a train formed of one carriage. The train is going at speed. There are 30 passengers on board. You can stop the train at any time by pulling an emergency break handle.
You ask out loud "Who wants the train to carry on?".
9 passengers raise their hands.
You then ask "Who wants it to stop?".
11 passengers raise their hands.
What do you do?
A) Pull the breaks: The majority of people who bothered to vote want the train to stop.
B) Do nothing: Since the train is already going at speed, those who didn't vote show they don't actively want the train to stop. Which means 19 passengers out of 30 have no interest in the train stopping.
C) Ask both questions again until you get at least 16 persons voting the same way, then act accordingly.
26/6/2016
You would do anything for the people you love. That's why the couple of songs I'm releasing today come in a neat wrapping entitled "SEO Your Friends".
Because, when you stop a minute and really think about it, if you call someone your friend and then don't do anything to improve their ranking in Google search results, can you say you care for them at all? Can you say you have their best interests at heart? Or are you simply trying to isolate them from the world like some possessive freak?
Think about this for a minute, then do the right thing and show the ones you love that they truly matter to you. SEO your friends.
28/2/2014
After almost a year without any news, I burst onto the stage with... not much news. Basically I've been working on my animation (cf. previous post) and it's going quite slowly. So in the meantime, I dug up some wildlife footage I shot in the summer of 2010 in my back garden and slapped a couple of tunes from Of Week Constitution onto it. The resulting music video, entitled "Jeudi et Vendredi" received mixed reviews from the insect community. The Coccinellidae Coalition hailed it as "(...) a tense action-packed thriller, sure to become a modern classic", whilst the Aphids Alliance dismissed it as "Clearly the fruit of a twisted mind (...) six minutes of your life you'll never get back". Amidst such heated controversy, it's probably better you make you're own mind up by watching the full uncensored video here.
19/11/2013
Right on, here's Mr Arrow, the program I'm working on: mrarrow.co.uk mraro.com.
It's far from finished, but I'm giving it a break to get started on a new music video. Once again I'll be using Blender to make it. I'll post updates on how things are going every now and then in this thread. Rock'n'Roll Baby!
5/12/2012
A couple of months ago, my latest album came out. If you haven't listened to it yet, it's streaming for free here. Go. You won't regret it.
Also, I've had the privilege to select songs for the monthly mixtape on Cast the Dice. There's some truly amazing tunes on it, so make sure to check it out.
Okay, enough of that unashamedly brash self promotion. For about a month now, I've been busying myself with a project that has no connections to music whatsoever. I'm writing a computer program. I won't bore you with the details, but basically it's a program to make websites. Whilst I'm far from being the first person to come up with that idea, it's a fun and challenging project. I'll post a link here once I have a beta to share (beta is just a short word for beetroot).
5/8/2012
On the 5th of June, exactly one week from today, my new album "Syntactic Sugars" is out in Glorious Digital Download. Here at Evil Ink Pen Records, everybody's going bananas. People are running up and down corridors looking busy, asking for marketing reports and sale projection figures, shouting down large mobile phones things like: "I need it on my desk by Monday morning!" and "I don't care if he's the head of Sony Music!", dropping stacks of paper on the floor and falling in love with whoever helps them pick it up, promising their superiors "I'll look into it" immediately before telling their subordinate "You've got to look into it" and messing around with stationary.
Business as usual.
My only concern is that when they find out that the album will sell for only £2 £4, they'll realise there's no way I can pay their wages.
29/5/2012
Trumpets and Bassoons!! are some of the instruments not featured on my new track "Fake ppl". It comes with a sparkling new video instead.
The video, based on a true story, retrace the steps of the default user picture of myspace and facebook as they grow older and start hitting the bottle.
In this song I'm singing, playing the guitar, the keyboard, the clarinet and shaking a relatively small set of keys. Well when I say playing the guitar, I actually only played a few notes and then looped them. Some call it "laziness", others call it "repetitive music", I call it "Fake ppl from Syntactic Sugars, out 5th June"
10/4/2012
First of all, I'm gigging tomorrow evening so you've just got enough time to send your favourite suit to the dry-cleaner. Also, I'm adding the finishing touches to a music video I made to promote recycling. It shall be uploaded to some cold room filled with servers and bounce right back to you in technicolor and stereo in the coming days.
4/4/2012
Ladies and Gentlemen, Evil Ink Pen Records proudly presents the first track from my forthcoming album!
HERE
Dusty is an instrumental I recorded last year. The rhythm section is a short sample from a very famous song by a very famous band (I'll just say they're the bee's knees) mixed with an array of pans and various kitchen utensils. The song tells the story of a bass, a guitar and a synthesiser who wish they had a ping pong table (they get one at the end).
Hope that sets you cruisin!
19/1/2012
Last summer I recorded my own version of Beck's song Ramshackle. Just for a laugh really. After watching it sitting there for over a year, looking sad and pale, I thought I'd release it, right here. Hope it flips your wig!
26/12/2011
Lured out of hibernation by Chris from Club Kamikaze, I will be playing this Thursday (8th December) at the Lock Tavern in Camden. Expect something different, I haven't played live since February. I'm quite tempted to sack all my gear and just turn up with a Stylophone, but we'll see how that works out. Come down earlyish (I'm first on) and stick around for what is guaranteed to be a great night. See you there!
5/12/2011
Recently, you might have noticed the lack of activity from the pevinkinelosphere. The explanation is simple: I'm taking time off to come up with some sharp hooks for a brand new set. The idea being that improvisation should be a part of the show, as opposed to all of it. Tough job...
Also, the website changed again and from now on I'll stop mentioning it.
28/6/2011
After a lot of reading, learning and typing, pevinkinel.com sheds its skin to reveal an orange and blue plumage with a random drawing by me and you on every page. The question is how long will it last?
5/3/2011
Loads of good things happening in Pevin Kinel Land. As previously hinted, I will be playing a live soundtrack to Our Daily Bread, this time in London at the Roundhouse. Before that, make sure to tune into Resonance FM on Wednesday 1st December from 6pm to 7pm for a live session on the Rockfort Show, I won't go all cheesy, promised. Right now, I'm off to the Fishtank Festival in East London, which should be a bowl!
27/11/2010
I played a ten minute improvised thing live on the New Yorkian radio WFMU. You can head off to Put The Needle On The Record's playlist and listen to it.
5/10/2010
I was in Jersey over the week-end, playing in various places for the Branchage Film Festival. My big moment was playing a live soundtrack for Our Daily Bread, the amazing film by Nikolaus Geyrhalter. I was a bit scared as to what the outcome was going to be, especially since the film doesn't have any music on it to start with. It went down very well and who knows, the experience might even be repeated in London. Watch this interstellar space...
1/10/2010
Time for the roughly monthly update. As promised, I just had a few very nice gigs thanks to the lovely audience who turned up and lent their ears, eyes, hands and other various organs. Next month is going to be interesting to say the least. I'm crossing the channel to play in Normandie AND in Jersey. I used to live in both those places so this should provoke some heart wrenching, emotionally laden performances. Anyway, you'll excuse me, I'm off to re-fold my tissues so they fit in the suitcase.
22/8/2010
I have been silent for a while, mainly because I couldn't post here due to some weird website problems but also because after the sheer madness following Of Week Constitution's release, things calmed down a bit. Anyway, you'll be happy to know that I'm all good and have a few nice gigs coming up. So put a shine on your dancing shoes and start your warming-up exercise!
15/7/2010
Using the first twenty seconds of "Vendredi" from my upcoming EP, I pulled all the stops and directed this fancy looking trailer. Watch it here.
14/5/2010
Did you know that if you decided to write every 5 letter words possible with the structure:
consonant/vowel/consonant/vowel/consonant
at one point you would write KINEL and then, a few hours/days later PEVIN. Astonishing isn't it? ... Well, allright, it's been a week and I'm nowhere near finished mixing the 7 tracks. On the plus side I have a cover and a title: Of Week Constitution. Little by little...
7/4/2010
I have just finished a little project. Every day for the past week I wrote and recorded a new song, so I have seven new songs. I only listened to all of them today and it's good enough, we're going to phase 2 : I'm now giving myself another week for the mixing, mastering, titling, weighing, etc... and making a nice cover.
31/3/2010
For those of you lucky enough to understand Portuguese, head over to Audioscopio.com to listen to some loopy explanations by me.
13/3/2010
What would be a better way to kick off the chilly month of February than getting "Tiger Tasty Put" played on BBC Radio Lancashire in the nicely eclectic show On The Wire? Well I suppose it could get more airplay on Different Class Radio (the brilliant people behind the upcoming Don't Forget To Go Home night on the 5th of this month), but... wait... That is actually what happened! Oh boy, this is going to be a great month.
1/2/2010
Things are heating up this week with two radio-shows playing some Sheds goodness. The Roll On show on ICR FM and The If Show on DCR played respectively "Stop For Nothing" (a playful Velofax cover) and "Roseanne (Bombay Mix)". How tasteful of them? Very tasteful indeed.
17/1/2010
2009 didn't end half badly for me, with a couple of gigs that turned out really well. A video of the last one for the Loaf Recordings Xmas party is here. And looking forward to 2010 with already the promise of a memorable evening at Barden's Boudoir next month.
2/1/2010
After a long wait, my new album Sheds is finally out. By pure coincidence, it arrived on my birthday.
24/11/2009
Not long now until the album is ready. The cover is done and on the sonic side of things, I'm just a few finishing touches away. Only one question remains: "How am I gonna mass produce that puppy?"
1/10/2009
Thanks to a break in my otherwise manic gigging schedule *bragging*, I found some time to start a feature on this very website. Starting gently with September, I will upload a new improvisation every month, for your ears delight. Hope you enjoy.
8/9/2009
For the last couple of months, I've been recording new songs as well as cleaning up older ones that never got properly released. The result will soon be an album. Some tunes are soft poppy songs, and others instrumental experiments, which should make for interesting listening. In the meantime, be sure to come see me live, improvising away.
6/8/2009