Kites in Space – Kites in Space Review
Who are Kites in Space? Steve Burton (a member) says they are from Ithaca, New York and Montreal (kind of like Chromeo I guess). They released a self-released album recently (album date unknown). Burton likened his band to The Shins and Broken Social Scene. There is very little known about this band, they randomly emailed me and their stuff was top notch.On their website “As a new band, we are adamant about embracing new media as a means to get our good word and good tunes out. We chose the internet as our sole medium.”. About a month ago I messaged them asking if they had a myspace page, they didn’t at the time and responded with a “Nope, sorry, we are not quite there yet, though I’m becoming more and more aware of the importance of one as I try to get the word out”. No kidding. Get on that please. (For your own sake)
They are giving away their album for free on their website which I’ve chosen to review because it’s worthy. Without any pictures or much information, it’s incredibly tough. All the information is going to be based on this web page.
The band itself does hold a reasonable comparison to Broken Social Scene considering the male and female vocals and sounding like a bigger band then they actually are (only 5 members). However, they seem to get more influences from folk and southern rock.
With just 9 tracks, Kites in Space try a variety of songs, to more upbeat songs like Walk It Off (BSS like) to xylophone-like (it’s from the xylophone family) Cords Wrapped Too Tight to Born Out of The Hustle (which is hustlin’ when it comes in terms of the pace). The variability in Kites in Space’s record is both the strength and ultimate weakness of the band.
They’ve yet to find that true medium between Katelyn Glanton and Seth Feldman Benn Bartishevich though there are flashes of brilliance. It’s a debut album and the band itself is probably unknown but the skill is there. They need to get a myspace up already, I have no photos and other then their album on my computer, there’s much more I want to find out.
They need to use the internet for all it’s worth as they are a good band and it isn’t really an excuse for a band not to make a crappy myspace layout, just as long as their music is on there. They are selling themselves short as they seemed to have put in a lot of time in the record.
Rating: 3.75 out of 5.
Cords Wrapped Too Tight by Kites in Space
Tags: album
I’ve just got an email from Benn’s father, here’s some more information:
The four guys in “Kites” (Benn, Stephan Burton, Scott Nelson and Chris Ploss) released three discs in their previous life as “Seth Feldman.” There was no “Seth” in the band. (In fact, Seth Feldman is someone the guys never met who is the founder and past president of the Film Studies Association of Canada.)
The first Seth Feldman album was released when the four were sophomores in high school. Their second and third releases came in successive years and were self-produced. Classmate Kate Glanton sang back-up on the last two discs. The band played all the main venues in the area. Their myspace page is still up at http://www.myspace.com/sethfeldman. The song “Watch the Colors Change” can be heard here and is still getting airplay in Upstate, New York. They put “Feldman” behind them during their first year in college and came back the next year as “Kites in Space” with Kate in tow.