Kito

I love how sometimes I can just be reminded of bands from the past that I haven't listened to or thought about in a long time and then end up discovering them as if they were new. Case in point, the UK 90s band Kito. They had a 7" released by Armed With Anger Records back in 1994, and even though AWA was a pretty small UK label, it had pretty good distribution. This means that a lot of AWA releases made it overseas, which means a lot of people who have been into hardcore since the 90s have generally heard (or heard of) a lot of the bands on the AWA roster. Well anyway, I was flipping through the used section of a UK record store's website recently, and I found a couple of cheap records that grabbed my interest. One was the Kito LP. Now, I have had the 7" in my colletion for quite some time (I even have 2 test presses of it), but I never ever heard the LP. So I decided to pick it up as it was super cheap

This record was put out by Flat Earth Records in 1998, which was a whopping 4 years after the 7". Even by today's standards where time moves at triple speed, four years would be considered quite a long time between releases, but back then the hardcore world looked very different in 1998 as it did in 1994. I think I was aware of this record coming out at the time, but by then Kito felt like something old to me, and the lack of colour vinyl (or indeed any kind of cover art) meant that there wasn't a lot of appeal in this record. I was probably more interested in chasing Coalesce, Elliott, and Ink & Dagger records at the time.

By the time this came out, a couple of original members had left the band. But listening to this for the first time all these years later, it doesn't sound significantly different to the 7" in my opinion (well, apart from the final song, which sounds like a totally different band). This is some heavy and dirty sounding hardcore that the north of England did so well back then. I think I saw this band play only once, at one of the 1in12 Club weekend festivals, so this record brings to mind the many times that I trekked over to the dark, wet and cold city of Bradford to listen to one or two bands I'd heard and 12 more that I hadn't. Fun times! But anyway, given that I am hearing this for the first time in 2023, I think this holds up pretty well. This is a good listen and well worth the pittance that I paid for it.