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Oct 07, 2020 By Christopher Roberts This Is the Kit

This Is the Kit, the project led by British-born singer/songwriter Kate Stables, is releasing a new album, Off Off On, on October 23 via Rough Trade. Now she has shared another song from the album, “Was Magician.” As well as the regular audio for the song, This Is the Kit has shared a live performance video for “Was Magician.” Watch and listen below.

Lyon Sound and Vision filmed the “Was Magician” video at L’Epicerie Morderne in France. It was remotely directed from NYC by Marisa Gesualdi.

Stables had this to say about the song in a press release: “Often it’s children who have underestimated powers. They have an understanding and wisdom about things that we think beyond their abilities, they are often leaps and bounds ahead of the ‘adults.’ People like Greta Thunberg—the young people who we have borrowed the earth from and who we have to give it back to, and hope that they will take better care of it than we have.”

Previously This Is the Kit shared the album’s first single, “This is What You Did,” via a video for the track. “This is What You Did” was one of our Songs of the Week. Then she shared another song from the album, “Coming to Get You Nowhere,” via a video for the track (which was also one of our Songs of the Week).

Off Off On is the follow-up to 2017’s breakthrough record, Moonshine Freeze, which was their first album for Rough Trade. Josh Kaufman of Bonny Light Horseman and Muzz produced the album.

“We were on the same page about a lot of musical ideas, as well as doing things I wouldn’t do musically,” Stables says of Kaufman in a press release. “It was a lovely mixture of ‘you’re exactly in my brain and exactly at the opposite end of my brain.’”

Stables’ band in the studio included Rozi Plain (bass/vocals), Neil Smith (guitar), Jesse D Vernon (guitar, keyboards), and Jamie Whitby-Coles (drum/vox). The album was recorded at Real World Studios in the UK and finished just before the pandemic.

Since Moonshine Freeze Staples has also been performing with The National and sang guest vocals on their 2019 album I Am Easy to Find.

“I think it did me loads of good,” says Stables of her experience with The National. “It was so brilliant when I was writing to be away from my songs and the responsibility of overseeing a band or a project—just to forget about that for a while and be a minion in someone else’s band was brilliant, I loved it. I think it really helped my writing and my getting through whatever I needed to get through.”

Read our 2017 interview with This Is the Kit.

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