Setting Tina is the new single by KICK, out today via Anomic Records (Germany), Dischi Sotterranei (Italy) and Sour Grapes (United Kingdom). The track introduces a change of direction from their 2016 debut album Mothers and the 2018 EP Post-Truth: the band has largely abandoned their electronic sound, favouring a more analogue, minimal and heavy oeuvre.
“Setting Tina” reveals a peculiar interpretation of the language of populist propaganda, which aims at people’s anger and frustration to manipulate and “set” them up for exploitation.
“The name Tina was inspired by the famous Thatcherian slogan ‘There is no alternative,’ with which the former British prime minister declared neo-liberalism as the only possible model of life. Times have changed, but the sense of inevitability unfortunately is still here: we feel victims and mere tools of a sick system that is leading us to collapse,” says the band.
The song was produced with Marco Fasolo (Jennifer Gentle, I Hate My Village) and features Scott Reeder (Kyuss, Fireball Ministry) on bass.
KICK are Chiara Amalia Bernardini (vocals, bass) and Nicola Mora (guitars, electric piano, synths, samplers). Their sound combines rough and dreamy elements defined as “sweet noise,” melting into the softness of the atmosphere, without any limits of genre. The duo from Brescia ranges from the hypnosis of trip-hop to the New York no-wave, up to stoner and desert rock.
The video of “Setting Tina”, directed by Marco Armando Alliegro, employs found footage to reinforce the restlessness of belonging to the machine of capitalism and the need for a rapprochement with the simplicity of nature.
“The clip offers different keys of interpretation, such as the relationship between civilized life and wild life which start from the same basic needs but in very different ways,” Alliegro explains. “In the first one there is a cruelty that acts on a sneaky and mocking level, while in the second one it acts in a bloody, but perhaps also in a more respectful way towards the others and the environment.”
Watch below:
Follow KICK:
Follow their labels:
Or via: