On the Rise
Kassie Krut

There is no set leader, and no hierarchy of responsibility. Instead, the project grew from three friends huddling around a computer, playing with ideas for drum beats and synth sounds.

Before it became a trio, Kassie Krut was a space for Kasra Kurt to experiment with musical ideas under a gibberish pseudonym. After moving to New York with Alpert and Anderegg, the project blossomed. Their first songs together were born out of Kurt’s ideas, contorted and reworked by his collaborators. The resulting self-titled EP is head-spinning, built from tense drum and bass breaks, heavy grime synth lines and intimidating deadpan vocals from Alpert.

“It doesn't feel that significant who starts the idea,” Kurt explains. “It usually gets other hands on it early enough that it feels like a Kassie Krut track quickly.

“Developing a rough sketch doesn't take that long. Whether there's meat on the bone is the important question. I'm not always the best at knowing. I rely on my bandmates to tell me an idea is worth pursuing or not.”

The ear Kurt trusts the most is Alpert’s. The two have been making music together since 2009. They first met at school in the UK as teenagers before moving to the US for college. They’ve played in bands since and maintain a strong creative partnership.

“Purely by chance, our skill sets fill in each other's gaps,” Kurt says. “I don't know if it's an insecurity I have, or just because I'm often the one coming up with the seed ideas, but I don't trust my ear that much. I really trust Eve’s ear.”

“Also, I trust you when you're like, ‘trust me, this is going to be good’,” Alpert responds. “We've grown up together. We've learned how to be there for each other, when we need space creatively, or physical space from each other on tour. We've got it down. We also love listening to music together. It’s our main hobby.”

Pulling from their love of musical oddness as explored in Palm, there is complexity and disorientation in how they approach rhythm, but also a love of pop songwriting and a minimal approach to layering. These are brash, unwieldy songs, but with a mysterious elegance to them. There’s humour and heart in how they write. Take "Racing Man", a propulsive club track with all stability stripped away. The beat slips mischievously, and sounds thrash around the mix while Alpert sings that she ‘could have been an apple or a frog’ in a nursery rhyme cadence.

The band is still trying to get a grip on these songs, too. The music was made before it was learned - the opposite to how they wrote within Palm, where riffs were practiced and then parts assembled. A day after this interview, the group embark on a US tour, not long after touring the EU. Despite the practice, the songs are morphing in the live setting.

“I would say it's very much a work in progress.” Kurt says. “In a rock band, the challenge is translating this song you've written and play together onto record. With more electronic music, the recording and the writing are usually much more synced up. Playing it live in a compelling way, that's where some level of translation needs to happen.”

Even beyond this, the band are still getting used to the novelty of hearing their songs out of their apartment and on sound systems. They have even been surprised by sounds lurking in the mix. “It's happy surprises,” Kurt notes, “but there have been a couple of things where it's like, ‘we should probably turn that down so we can actually hear what we're doing’.”

Rather than relying on backing tracks, the group have been recreating sounds from their EP physically - including using a guitar with three strings. “Matt’s playing all the drums and Kasra hits this guitar with a drumstick” Alpert says. “It emulates a lot of the sounds on the EP, so we’re trying to ‘sub in sub out’ as many live elements as we can.”

But why the three strings? “We still love the like timbre of the guitar and the feel of a guitar, but we're not playing riffs or chords, so you don't need six strings,” Kurt says matter-of-factly.

One benefit of their more streamlined live set-up, comprised of loose industrial drums and broken guitar bits, is that they’ve cut down on the things that could go wrong on tour. “Honestly, the fact that we didn’t lose any gear and had nine planes and four trains in seventeen days, the highlight is just making it to every show,” Alpert says.

“I think we've learned over the years is flexibility is an important skill to acquire,” she continues. “Making the best set you can with what limited equipment you have, I admire. I want to try to be as flexible as possible with this project.”

Both artists capture a feeling that Kurt is chasing in their own work. “They're both electronic artists where the music feels physical. It doesn't feel too clean. It makes my body want to move. It has a visceral nature.”

“And a playfulness,” Alpert agrees. “It’s the humanness. Not ‘amateurish’, but it's not scientific.”

“I think it's a good example of how sometimes not knowing too much can be a good thing creatively,” says Kurt.

This spontaneity is balanced by days of tinkering with synth sounds, generating new instruments through sound design. These are sounds that have already turned the heads of some of their heroes, such as Panda Bear, who invited them to support his tour, and also reworked their track ‘Hooh beat’ for an expanded version of their self-titled debut EP, released this week on Brooklyn label Fire Talk.

“We didn’t think he would leave most of the track as it was, and just sing and play guitar on it.” Alpert laughs. “That's the joy of remixing, is having free rein to interpret other people's music.”

The remix EP itself acts as a statement of intent, with a gloriously diverse cast of underground heroes contributing, from no wave icon Container to Kero Kero Bonito band member The JLB. The different interpretations also highlight the varied strains of experimental and club music influencing the group.

And their influences go beyond these touchpoints. The record’s vocals have a flavour of Tirzah through the menacing and ambiguous take on the love song. On ‘Blood’, Alpert sings ‘you’re everything that I want, I’m everything that you need’ over a swirling and discordant barrage.

“We're naturally drawn to pulling from disparate emotions or tendencies,” Kurt says. “I consciously think about playing with extreme contrast, so if there's a really heavy drumbeat, I'm curious about putting like a sparse waltz keyboard line over it, or whatever the opposite of that feeling is, and seeing how those can coexist.”

Though still germinating, Kassie Krut have already achieved a lifelong ambition having supported Kim Gordon, which Alpert describes as a ‘pinch me’ moment. “We grew up as Sonic Youth obsessives. That's sort of how our first band formed,” she says. “I'm sure tons of bands say this, but she was inspirational for me picking up a guitar and wanting to play in a band. And our music makes sense with her solo project. I genuinely love the album they put out. She's still such an inspiration artist because she's down to try new things and reinvent herself.”

Kurt and Alpert have known each other since those early days when she was inspired to first join a band. But rather than centred on their story, the band has three equal voices in the form of bandmate Anderegg.

“We were excited about the idea that he's not only a good drummer and talented on a number of instruments, but he also sings, and I love his voice.” Kurt says. “He has this choir boy voice that I really like.

“The goal for this project increasingly is for us to be three songwriter/producers together. We have songs that some of them I sing, some Eve sings, and some Matt sings. Want to have it intentionally left open as to what our roles are.”

Kassie Krut is still in flux. They have released just a short collection of songs, all sonically close and compositionally minimal, but with boundless potential. As they tour, tinker and create, they work on art that’s not only living and breathing, but leaves you breathless.