Kikamora
By Trudi Goldsmith (October 2016)
This week I caught up with five piece band ‘Kikamora’ who are currently touring their new EP ‘ In The Henhouse’ throughout England and Wales including a forthcoming night at Bristol Bierkeller with Phil Campbell of Motorhead fame. Read on to find out more about the band!
Who are Kikamora?
We are Wilf Kite on Vocals; Jimi Bessant on lead guitar; Daniel Marshall on rhythm guitar; Rob Ives on Bass and Rich Wilson on Drums.
Where is the band from?
Clevedon and Bristol.
How long have you been together?
We decided to start a band in January 2015 but played our first show in April 2015
How would you describe your music?
A very energetical hard rocking band who do what we do.
Where did you get the band name from?
We all came up with different ideas and decided we liked Kikamora best. Its comes from eastern mythology and means a female house spirit.
Who writes the music and lyrics?
We collectively write the music sometimes from riffs that have been hanging around for a while and we have jammed on... or it could start with an acoustic idea and a melody and develop from there. Every song is different. Wilf always handles all the lyrics but sometimes we come up with subjects for songs together.
Do you have any memorable gig stories?
Wilf was being Wilf and decided he needed to do hand stands to warm up for our slot at Hard Rock Hells Highway to hell competition. So ten minutes before we go on he does his hand stand and rips his trousers. Goes on stage and rips the rest of them wide open.
What's your favourite venue to play live?
We love playing Wembley haha. That's a tricky one. We love places in Bristol like the Fleece and the Keller because everyone comes out but you can't beat playing to a new crowd and we love coming over to Wales for that! They rock hard!
What's the best and worst thing about being in a band?
Best thing about being in a band is playing live and writing music, it's pointless without that. There's no better feeling than writing a bunch of new tunes and going out and playing them and seeing people's reactions.
What can anyone who comes to see you live expect?
A great show. We put alot of energy into our performance. We play hard. We all work very well together and we have fun doing it.
What would you consider the bands greatest achievement to date?
Writing our new ep and recording and releasing it! We are all very proud of it.
Tell me about your new EP….
In the Henhouse is a great mix of what we can do. We are a hard rocking band but we have some songs that aren't in our regular sets and we got to record them and make them sound really great. We have a really heavy riff based hard rocking song which is fast becoming a fan favourite so much so that we are starting our new sets with it.
And there are some really heavy blues influenced songs one that's particularly groovy with Frankie Povey on Sax and Harrison Treble on Keys.
I don't wanna give too much away but it was nice to be able to spend time on the tracks and try them out. When we recorded in 2015 we wrote the songs just a couple of months before we went in to the studio.
What plans do the band have for 2017?
We are planning to start writing for an album so hopefully we can at least get that recorded in 2017 and go from there. It’s the next logical step! We have plenty booking gigs though so were not going anywhere.
You can check out Kikamora onTwitter, Facebook and YouTube or catch them live on tour now. The new EP can be found on amazon, Spotify google play and iTunes.
