When KuleeAngee first took shape, it wasn’t a masterplan - it was a Wednesday night epiphany in the queue outside Dalston Superstore. What began on that night out, friends Duncan Grant and Keshav Kanabar have since evolved into one of the UK’s most exciting new live acts - a genre-fluid, emotionally charged blend of electronica, indie, and something distinctly their own.
Though they’d known each other for years, the duo only truly connected while working as session musicians for a mutual friend. “That’s when we realised that we shared a lot of the same music taste,” Duncan recalls.
But it wasn’t until that offhand conversation outside the club - both disillusioned with music-as-work - that things clicked. “I just turned to Kesh and said, ‘I’m dying to start a band.’ He goes, ‘With who?’ and I said, ‘With you, you fanny.’”
“Pretty early on the sparks were flying and the influences were really coming through,” smiles Kesh, “but it felt like we were doing it in our own way. It’s completely different when you’re doing something that’s just for you as a band. It just puts you in that kind of zone which you don’t get when you’re basically just doing a job.”
Soon bashing out bangers, the duo then needed a name. So where did KuleeAngee come from? It’s a long story - and like many good band names, it’s part mistake, part myth. “It was a middle name I thought I had as a kid,” Kesh laughs. It wasn’t. But after naming their studio KuleeAngee Studios - the name stuck. “We’re convinced we’d have double the followers if the name were easier to spell,” Kesh jokes, “but we’ve never looked back.”
Trying to categorise KuleeAngee is like trying to bottle a heatwave. They’ll mention Hot Chip, Confidence Man, old 60s records, Danger Mouse, SAULT, Daft Punk - but those are just fingerprints. The sound is sweat and sequencers, beats and basslines, a kind of late-night euphoria that lives in the liminal space between dancefloor and dive bar.
“It’s our version of modern-day rock and roll,” says Duncan. “It’s music to move your body to and let yourself get a bit loose to - not full sweating-party - but you can just let yourself go with it and let the grooves take you.”
They write fast, instinctively. Demos often become final tracks. There’s no acoustic draft, no twelve-step production plan. Just two musicians, a laptop, and whatever instruments they can carry up the stairs.
On their sophomore single ‘Television’, the band brought in John Moody [Franc Moody] to sprinkle some studio alchemy. “He made us think more about flow,” Kesh says. “Find the good stuff and you can pluck from anywhere - it doesn’t have to be verse pre-chorus chorus - you can get the baseline and that can be your chorus. It opened up our mind a wee bit.”
Live, the band is still figuring it out. The setup changes, the gear shifts. They admit their early shows were challenging. “We just don’t have enough arms,” Kesh laughs.
“Because we’d done so much work in the live field, it started as this thing that we wanted to make for the sake of the making and not for the sake of the performance,” explains Duncan. But with a sequencer and a new balance between synths, samples, and raw performance, the show now breathes as much as it bangs.
While residing in London, the pair originally hail from Scotland. Kesh comments, “In Glasgow, it doesn’t take long to be part of the scene. It’s small, connected. You’ll always bump into someone.” London, by contrast, is vast and diverse - both a blessing and a challenge.“ There’s just more in London - more music, more pockets, more opportunity,” Kesh continues. “But it’s also a lot harder to make your mark.”
When asked who they’re tipping at the moment, they’re quick to shout out peers and friends: Leah Cleaver , MRCY, Nectar Woode, and Lloyd Scott among them. “Seeing friends doing their own thing is always inspiring,” says Kesh.
Continuing their reign of sonically sun-drenched anthems, the band’s latest single “Push It” is the perfect addition to form part of a forthcoming five-track EP, due later this year.
You can catch KuleeAngee at The Social on 28th May.
‘Push It’ is out NOW!