This band keeps it moving!
A Brooklyn band known for its high-energy live shows will launch its latest album with a release party at C’Mon Everybody in Crown Heights on April 27. Karikatura, a six-piece that draws on punk, reggae, and Afro-Cuban music, worked hard to capture the spirit of its dance-ready concerts on its second album. But “Ghost Light” is not a document of the group’s stage performance, said guitarist Dima Kay — in fact, it is the other way around.
“We’re very active onstage,” said Kay. “We do a lot of improvisation, and a lot of that is reacting to the audience.”
But there is no audience in the recording studio, so the band sought to conjure that vibe in other ways. That meant creating the songs in the studio, maintaining spontaneity, said Kay.
“We used to be a band that played live and on the road, and then re-created that in the studio,” Kay says. “Now we’re more focused on songwriting; we use the studio as a creative outlet.”
The heavy-gigging band also took some time off of the road so that they could focus on the music, said Kay.
“We really reflected on all the traveling we’d done, and that allowed us to focus on the emotions and feelings in the songs,” he said.
The new method of creation meant that once the sessions were done, the band members had to learn how to play the songs live. A three-minute song might become a 10-minute song live, as the band members interact with the audience. Kay says that the evolving music keeps things exciting for band and audience.
“The songs never stop changing,” he said.
And the band will keep moving forward even as it looks towards it third album, said the guitarist and bandleader.
“I don’t even know what the next record’s going to be like,” Kay admitted. “Our main thing is that we don’t want to ever make the same album again and again.”
Karikatura record release party at C’mon Everybody (325 Franklin Ave. between Clifton Place and Greene Avenue in Crown Heights, www.cmone
