Kyte

Kyte On Dead Waves, Kyte’s ever-atmospheric, dreamy soundscapes come coupled with big pop sensibilities. First single ‘ihnfsa’ is symphonic, lush and melancholic; an exemplum of the band’s newfound focus. ‘Smoke Saves Lives’, meanwhile, is an enormous-sounding explosion of big choruses, driven by a simple yet hypnotic piano line. Kyte’s debut works precisely because of this contrast with the album’s more far-reaching musical efforts: the epic ‘Each Life Critical’, for instance, sounds like Sigur Rós soundtracking Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Such huge sounds need the lyrical content to match, on which Nick Moon duly delivers (“painful nerves are turning, sleepless, searching, back in time, hallucinate the love”).

Though Dead Waves is their first proper long-player, Kyte have made impressively large strides for a new act. They built up a strong following in both the indie and dance press, thanks in part to supporting slots with the likes of The Whip, School of Seven Bells, iLiKETRAiNS and Iceland’s Ólafur Arnalds. In the US, their track ‘Boundaries’ was used on a nationally-aired advert for HBO’s The Sopranos.

The band can also boast of quite remarkable success in Japan, following the release of their Japan-only album Science For The Living. This saw them chart at number 5, and debut one place higher than U2. 2010 will see this particular Kyte fly even higher.