Peace + Harmony is out now!
Image: Supplied.
Emerging Manchester-based artist [ K S R ] recently shared his latest EP, Peace + Harmony. To celebrate the release, the musician has shared with MILKY five things he learnt whilst creating the EP!
"My third EP, [ P E A C E + H A R M O N Y ] is a collection of my thoughts and experiences from my journey throughout the last two years of my life. Lots of aspects of my life changed over 24 months, along with everyone around the globe. When we were thrown into the unknown at the start of 2020, I stepped away from music for a while as I couldn't find any peace in my creativity and needed to evolve. I finally started to feel cohesive with my songwriting and music, and I could feel harmony between myself and my art once again." [ K S R ] shares of the EP.
I LEARNT TO BE HONEST WITH MYSELF.
If i’m not being very honest with myself then I can’t deliver a clear and obvious message within my music, there was a period where I was growing and was writing lyrics that I just did not identify with or felt that was 100% honest therefore has never seen the light of day. But this led me to start talking to people around me and who I value in my life about how I was feeling and this created avenues of song ideas to write about.
ALLOWING OTHER MUSICIANS TO BE MORE INVOLVED IN THE CREATION PROCESS.
Making this record has been an amazing process, just within the Syndicate MGMT team we had a group that could write, produce and create records together. Dom Porter was a stunning exclusive producer, Ed Staal as a songwriter and Guitarist added his groove to the records, Mercy’s Cartel as a backing vocalist and James Mason as an executive producer and percussion. The first draft of any song is never its final form so sitting down with the group and dissecting, rearranging and rewriting songs until it felt perfect was what we did. Also have to mention J Strings for jumping on guitar for Harmless and just making it sound so authentic and natural.
I NOW UNDERSTAND WHY I LOVE WHAT I LOVE.
I feel like I have come to learn to enjoy creating once again, when you are making a record you are always going to have disappointments and successes but if you don’t enjoy the journey then you are just waiting for the end product every time. Lockdown was a reflection period for myself due to the world shutting down. There was not much to talk about at home, so when we met up for the first session of the year for [ P + H ]it just felt like a huge breath of fresh air and calmness to my life when it was needed most.
LEARNING TO BE PATIENT.
I have been making music since back end of 2018 but throughout this whole period I have wanted to be part of the First Word Records family, working closely with Children Of Zeus I got see how they functioned as a label and everything they did that made me believe that it was a perfect future home for my music. I first had a meeting with Aly in 2019 in London and I questioned what was needed to be on the label and I asked if I was ready right now and he just said no. Flash forward to 2021 and I’m here baby.
MAKE MY SOUND UNIQUE.
Everyone in the team that has worked on this EP comes from completely different musical backgrounds, meaning that there are elements of what they listen to personally that were brought into the studio. For example our friend fikayo owolabi who shoots for us sometimes brought in Benjiflow - Deep End and that kickstarted a whole evening of afro inspired beats. Another artist we fell in love with during this EP was Jack Harlow and his track 21C/Delta inspired Lilly/Apart which is the second track on the record, everyone loves a switch up in a track but my one is about stripping the song back to its core.
Peace + Harmony is out now!