The Belfast Irish language trio shared also a new single ‘Sick In The Head’.
Only a month ago, Kneecap’s debut feature film starring Michael Fassbender was shown at Sundance Film Festival, becoming the first Irish-language film to feature on the festival programme and was acquired for cinematic release by Sony Pictures too.
Today, Kneecap have announced details of their debut album Fine Art, to be
released on Heavenly Recordings on Friday June 14th 2024.
Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap, and DJ Próvaí made the album last summer. The 12-track album was produced by Toddla T, and blends Irish and English in its raps. The album features Lankum’s Radie Peat, Grian Chatten of Fontaines D.C. (as heard on previous track ‘Better Way To Live’) and Jelani Blackman, and is set in an imaginary pub in Belfast called The Rutz. Annie Mac recorded some sounds for the record.
Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head is mentioned as analogous to the record.
To coincide wirth the announcement a new aong and video by Peadar Ó Goill was released, with the song rightly claiming some Wu Tang / 36 Chambers energy – “The sound of the Wu Tang’s 36 Chambers hidden behind a doorway on the Falls Road” as they put it.
“When working on the album we had periods of great productivity but also periods with a total lack of anything creatively. Towards the end of recording we hit a proper wall and this is the result. Our mental health was being tested and we said f*ck it it we’re doomed to mental torture we want to have some money to get through it. We’ve had enough of it while being broke round Belfast.”
Kneecap
Watch ‘Sick In The Head’:
“We’re in the centre of a sweaty mosh pit mid-gig in a dark warehouse room. This pit represents emotional state, from f*cked up and chaotic to moments of clarity and calmness.The warehouse offers escape – from the mundane… for the marginalised.”
Full album info below.
In other news, Kneecap are taking legal action after a £15,0000 arts grant they were due to get was blocked by the UK government for anti-British sentiment. The band said an independent selection board had approved the grant but it was then rescinded.
UK Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch’s spokesperson said they did not want to hand taxpayers’ money “to people that oppose the United Kingdom itself”.
KNEECAP Fine Art Artwork & Tracklist:
1. 3CAG (ft. Radie Peat)
2. Fine Art
3. I bhFiacha Linne
4. I’m Flush
5. Better Way To Live (ft. Grian Chatten)
6. Sick In The Head
7. Love Making
8. Drug Dealin Pagans
9. Harrow Road (ft. Jelani Blackman)
10. Parful
11. Rhino Ket
12. Way Too Much
Pre-order Fine Art HERE
About Fine Art – Kneecap
When Kneecap entered the studio with producer Toddla T in the summer of 2023, they quickly decided to scrap everything they had already prepared for the album they were about to record. Instead, they decided to build a pub together.
Built on a West Belfast side street, The Rutz is a community boozer, in that the entire community uses it. All human life is inside, either thriving, striving or skiving.. Religious affiliations are irrelevant and the chatter is an intoxicating blur of English and Irish.
Although the pub is currently just a figment of the band’s imagination, all of the action on Kneecap’s exhilarating first album – Fine Art – takes place in The Rutz immersing the listener in a world thus far unrepresented in modern music.
Across the record’s twelve tracks and the interconnecting moments between them (recorded by the band and friends including DJ Annie Mac), the pub comes to life vividly, providing the perfect backdrop for the cast of characters that join the dots throughout the album. From the moment the idea was born back in Toddla T’s studio, it was the obvious location to base the world of Kneecap in.
Featuring vocal contributions from Lankum’s Radie Peat, Grian Chatten of Fontaines D.C. and Jelani Blackman, that positive effect comes into its own on Fine Art. A hip-hop record in the sense that the glorious sprawl of Check Your Head was, its approach to modern music is magpie like, reflecting how an evening of music might evolve at a festival, or inside the right kind of pub. Where the band’s previous mixtape 3cag reflected life and issues in Ireland at the point of recording, Fine Art was always intended to be about the band themselves.
Mo Chara: “We’re Irish speakers living in an urban area, the first or second generation to be born in the city. Traditionally it’s a rural language after colonialism pushed it out west towards the sea. We wanted to bring the Irish language into the modern era by incorporating aspects of youth culture into it. There’s a different lifestyle in the city to rural areas. There were no words for drugs in the Irish language so we had to invent them. We’d recycle old words and apply them to modern things. That’s part of the world we want to create, where the Irish language is central and it’s modern.”
Moglaí Bap: “The beauty of Kneecap is that we not only piss off people from the Unionist background, we also piss off people from the Irish community.. We don’t discriminate who we piss off. There’s conservative people in the Irish language community who think that the language should be sustained as an ancient language in all its beauty. They think we’re ruining the language with the words we’re using. But you start to hear young people using some of the words we use in our songs, referring to drugs or party life. That feels like we’re having a positive effect on youth culture.”
“When we got into the studio with Toddla T, we scrapped every song we had and started from complete scratch. T’s idea was to tell the story of Kneecap. So the record was conceived as the listener stepping into Kneecap’s world. That’s where the idea came to set whole thing in a pub. You walk into a pub at the start, there’s someone offering you a drink, there’s a singsong… really, it’s us taking you by the hand and leading you into our world.”
Kneecap Tour Dates
14.03.24 – Music Ireland Official Showcase SxSW – AUSTIN, TX
15.03.24 – Full Irish Breakfast Showcase SxSW – AUSTIN, TX
17.03.24 – MGM Music Hall – BOSTON (supporting Dropkick Murphys)
18.03.24 – Foundry – PHILADELPHIA $
21.03.24 – Axis Club – TORONTO $
23.03.24 – Warsaw – BROOKLYN, NYC $
26.03.24 – Biltmore Cabaret – VANCOUVER $
27.03.24 – Biltmore Cabaret – VANCOUVER $
28.03.24 – Barboza – SEATTLE $
30.03.24 – New Parish – OAKLAND $
02.04.24 – Voodoo Rooms – SAN DIEGO $
04.04.24 – Echoplex – LOS ANGELES $
15.06.24 – Bergenfest – NORWAY
05.07.24 – Rock Werchter – BELGIUM
11.07.24 – Mad Cool Festival – SPAIN
13.07.24 – Bitterzoet – AMSTERDAM
18.07.24 – Heineken Big Top – GALWAY
20.07.24 – Super Bock Festival – PORTUGAL
23.08.24 – Reading Festival – U.K.
24.08.24 – Leeds Festival – U.K.
14.11.24 – Foundry – SHEFFIELD £
15.11.24 – New Century Hall – MANCHSTER £
16.11.24 – Barrowlands – GLASGOW £
19.11.24 – Rock City – NOTTINGHAM £
20.11.24 – SXW – BRISTOL £
21.11.24 – The O2 Forum – LONDON £
$ U.S. headline tour (with Revival Season support)
£ U.K. headline tour
Tickets for the U.K. tour go on sale at 10am 23rd February and are available HERE
