KAV

“This fuzz-ridden piece of Punky Britpop carries off its rickety, shambolic aesthetic with style.

THE SUN – HOT TRACKS ‘Blaggers N’ Liars’ Review – March 2012 - The Sun

KAV has a penchant for classic rock ‘n’ roll, and does he know how to get down!

Returning from a whirlwind US tour that brought him cult status, the Leicester-born lad bellowed his way through a raucous set of guitar-heavy tunes alongside his trusty Band of Blaggers.

Gutsy Blaggers ‘N’ Liars 2012 caught punters off-guard, jamming a beefy sound that mixed US punk à la The Stooges and earthy Brit rock. Lizard King effortlessly spun Stateside blues with screaming choruses, well-crafted licks and a shed-load of gritty slide guitar.

Sonic Soul Lovin’ was a near-anthemic mix of dirty bluegrass instrumentals, killer riffs and a singalong vibe that smacked of early Primal Scream. Eat your heart out, Ryan Adams.

It’s little wonder that Kav has attracted the interest of rock royalty including ex-Oasis man Guigsy. Blaggers ‘N’ Liars 2012 is out as a single on March 26. - The Daily Star

Lost Leicester lagger Kav Sandhu returns tomorrow with a new band and an old liver. He talks to CAT TURNELL

At home in Camden, after a career-
long fiesta that would have Winehouse gasping for rehab, Kav Sandhu is sipping tea and nattering to his local paper. It’s not the first time the two parties have exchanged pleasantries. At 28,
Kav’s been there, done that, and soiled the T-shirt. The Mercury has duly observed him shimmy his way through the excess: playing guitar with the Happy Mondays, Glasto with Sonic Audio, gigs in LA, and an untold number of A-list inflected Get Loaded nights in the capital.
“I’m a bit like a weathered pirate
that’s been snagged a few times,” admits Kav, with a helpful analogy.

After the V festival last year, Kav parted ways with the Mondays. A week later he went into a studio with his drummer mate Jim to record the Blaggers and Liars EP. And that brings us bang up-to-date with his latest vehicle: the simply-titled Kav.

It’s a proper band, he insists, but it’s what you might call a happy dictatorship. The sound is probably what you’d expect from a man who earned his trade playing the lolloping, riderfuelled riffs of Madchester’s Mujahideen.

“I would describe it as dirty rock ’n’
roll and electric blues,” says Kav. “It’s just real, it’s really honest, it’s back to basics.”
“We’ve been around the world and I’ve done a lot of things and you get to the point that is the Blaggers and Liars EP.

“All that emotion and experience is
poured into that EP. Yeah, I feel like a pirate, basically.”

A single and debut album will follow
on the This Feeling label, although the EP is currently available from TuneTribe.com and HMV.

Kav will be at The Charlotte, with
some of his mates from London, tomorrow.

“It’s kind of like a bit of an introduction to what we’ve been doing down here, and a taking it back home kind of thing.”

INFORMATION
KAV is/are at The Charlotte tomorrow for an indie club night featuring LA’s Eastern Conference Champions, Soul Boy Mystic Collective and Marner Brown.

Tickets £5.
www.myspace.com/kavsonic
- Leicester Mercury

"Dirge-like blues rock that's part Primal's XTRMNTR through its harsh beats and part Sisters Of Mercy with gloomy guitars."
- Blaggers N' Liars Review

Hometown: Leicester/London. The lineup: Kavin "Kav" Sandhu (vocals, guitar), James Portas (drums), Dan Gulino (bass), Bobby Angels (keyboards, harmonica).
The background: A bit of a jack of all trades, Kav is the former frontman for a band called SonicAudio who played the Astoria and Glastonbury in their time. As a DJ the 28-year-old has filled the world's dancefloors with his indie/electro remixes. He's got his Electric Dirt Junkie night at London's Studio Valbonne, where new talent (such as Rumblestrips) and rock royalty (well, Leah Wood) join him each week on the wheels of - are they still made of steel? And he's been an indie promoter for touring club/crossover night Get Loaded where they'd play "whatever we wanted: drum'n'bass, techno, the Stones, early Beatles, blues, northern soul and funk."


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It was also Sandhu who persuaded Shaun Ryder to reform Happy Mondays in 2004 as a last-minute headline act for Get Loaded In The Park, a 20,000-capacity festival on Clapham Common that grew out of his club night. He was subsequently invited to join the band, spending several years as their guitarist and co-writing material for their comeback album. In the past few years he has played with the Mondays at festivals alongside Bob Dylan and Guns N' Roses and even toured Australia on the same bill as James Brown.
He's spent the past six months writing and recording new material for his debut solo album, collaborating with everyone from New Order's Peter Hook to Adam Ficek from Babyshambles. On his forthcoming Blaggers & Liars EP, he touts the sort of electronically enhanced, krautrock-inflected riff rock and high-energy mescal-blues purveyed by Primal Scream on their Vanishing Point and XTRMNTR albums. His EP is an eclectic case in point: the title track has the speed and attack of the Scream in chugging, charging Neu! mode. Lizard King starts off slow and swaggering and features bluesy slide guitar before transforming into a Led Zep-ish riff monster, like The Stone Roses circa Second Coming. Easy is a blues-soaked missive about life's "chancers". And Satanic Circus Mask makes you think of the Stones' Sympathy For The Devil hauled into the digital age by Death In Vegas. Lyrically, Kav veers between the lysergic dementia of Shaun Ryder and the insurrectionary fervour of Bobby Gillespie.

The buzz: "This blagger is a latterday Jagger!"

The truth: If you fell for the baggy-era swagger of the Mondays and the Scream, you'll like this Kav-man.

Most likely to: Be a 24 Hour Party Person.

Least likely to: Replace Bez in the nation's affections as Shaun Ryder's greatest three-letter-named sidekick.

What to buy: The Blaggers & Liars EP is released by This Feeling on April 21.

File next to: Primal Scream, Death In Vegas, Black Grape, Stone Roses.

Links: www.myspace.com/kavsonic

- The Guardian UK

Clash Magazine – One’s to Watch

"Reminiscent of The Stone Roses when they swapped Frankie Knuckles for John Bonham, Kav’s debut is a bluesy, swaggering affair, with the singer refusing to pull his punches... ‘Blaggers & Liars’ he may detest, but Kav can rest easy as on this evidence he’s got the goods to match his boasting."
- CLASH Magazine

"Oozing testosterone, it sounds like it's been marinated in JD and soaked in Marlborough smoke along the way..... Imagine Shaun Ryder-meets Bob Dylan with a big injection of off-your-face techno and you're almost there."

- Blaggers N' Liars Review

Kavin Sandu’s music might be all volleys and daggers, booze and swagger, but take him out of his native England and station him in Los Angeles for a year, and he’s more than a little bit wonder-struck.

“It really does inspire me on a day-to-day basis,” the singer-guitarist and architect of the rock band KAV says of the time he’s spent here recording his forthcoming debut album “Rise of the Clowns.” “I suppose I’m a sponge at the end of the day … You find inspiration in anything you experience in life.”

||| Download: “Blaggers n’ Liars”
And that’s been plenty so far. The native of Leicester was a electro-rocker and the DJ behind London’s genre-mashing Get Loaded club nights (which birthed the Get Loaded in the Park festival) when, at age 24, he set aside his band, Sonic Audio, and joined the third incarnation of the legendary Manchester band Happy Mondays, co-writing the album “Unkle Dysfunktional.” The relationship began when Sandu asked the Mondays to play Get Loaded and frontman Shaun Ryder told him, “‘I need you to play guitar,’” Sandhu says. “He didn’t even pose it as a question.”

Who was he to say no? “I was 24. I’d done all right — I mean, I’d been in bands. But this was different,” Sandhu says. “Shaun always said to me, ‘This is your apprenticeship.’ I had this impression of the Mondays as this crazy ball of energy that bounces all over the place and somehow ends up in the goal. This was a really good opportunity to see how a band works … the legal side, how records are put out, negotiating with labels and tour promoters … It’s not just about picking up a guitar and playing.”

Sandhu can do that too. During his tenure with the Mondays — which included the band’s performance at Coachella 2007 (”Afterwards, I knew I’d be back in Los Angeles at some point,” Sandhu says) — he’d occasionally write his own material, the first of which emerged as the “Blaggers n’ Liars” EP in 2008. KAV’s psych-blues cocktail of Primal Scream roar-meets-Stonesy riff was stirred, in part, with the help of his boyhood friend, drummer James Portas.

“I’m not sure it fits with the current British scene, which is very electro,” Sandhu says. “Even when we had Sonic Audio a few years, it had a very rock ’n’ roll edge to it.”

The next of KAV’s new material, the “Mr. Nice” EP, was originally scheduled for a 2009 release, but Sandhu has pushed it back to fine-tune the mixes. The title track is an homage to Howard Marks, aka Mr. Nice, the drug advocate, convicted drug smuggler and author who ran for political office in the U.K. in the late ’90s. Marks had been one of the DJs at Get Loaded.

“I was in the studio in Leicester and I got some inspiration,” Sandhu says. “I sent him the track and didn’t hear anything for quite a while. Finally, I called him and he said, ‘It’s bloody brilliant.’” The pair ended up sampling some of Marks’ spoken-word over the top. Perhaps not coincidentally, the EP will be released next year about the time the biopic “Mr. Nice” (featuring Rhys Ifans and Chloë Sevigny) comes out.

For now, KAV continues to work on the album — Sandu is collaborating with producer Josh Ostrander (the frontman of the L.A. trio Eastern Conference Champions who has also played in KAV’s live band). “He’s the first producer I’ve worked with who really gets what I’m about,” Sandhu says.

||| Live: KAV plays the Echo on Wednesday with Helen Stellar, Square on Square and Nightmare Air.

Photo by Andrew Herrold
- Buzz Bands - LA (Kevin Bronson - LA Times/ Spin Magazine)

"Kav seems to have been surviving on a staple diet of barbituates and sleazy, sunset strip Rock ‘n’ Roll. Deciding to roll the dice and go it alone, songs from forthcoming EP such as Lizard King’ (which sounds suitably like it was written after a Mescal binge in the desert) and the pulsing glitch-pop of ‘Blaggers And Liars’ sees the London-based Kav let loose the demons that presumably come with partying with Shaun Ryder for half a decade (yikes!). The result of meeting satan at the crossroads every month is a low-slung, blues –indebted rock ‘n’ roll outing seeped in whisky-soaked saloon brawls and murder ballad gusto.”
- Blaggers & Liars EP Review - May 2008

"Kav, leads his 'band of pirates' on a journey that makes no attempt to conform to the modern indie sound. Heavy bluegrass riffs cast against a plaintive Lou Reed-esque vocal set them apart from anything about at the moment.... Lizard King and Killing Yourself are stylishly bluesy while final song and current EP Blaggers'n'Liars peers down like a mature but broody Black Rebel Motorcycle Club."

- Live Review - June 2008

SUBBA-CULTCHA.COM
KAV INTERVIEW
KAV

My name is Kav short for Kavin and I Sing and play guitar in the band.

With a new EP out, we caught up with the sensational Kav…

Fresh from rocking Los Angeles with some select gigs and getting props in the LA Times for a show-stopping performance at the legendary Whisky A Go Go, Kav is about to return to the UK to unleash his new release,
the ‘Blaggers N’ Liars’ EP.

This will coincide with his first live appearances since guesting with Datarock at last year’s Reading and
Leed’s festivals. After teenage stints forming bands, which brought notable performances at the Astoria and Glastonbury with Sonic Audio, Kav created the infamous Get Loaded nights.

While co-promoting the 20,000 capacity festival on Clapham Common that grew from the night’s success, he was invited to join the Happy Mondays, and subsequently has spent the past few years travelling the world as their guitarist and co-writer on the band’s much heralded comeback album.

Following tours with James Brown, playing on line-ups with Guns & Roses and Bob Dylan, and events like Coachella and Fuji Rocks, Kav left the Mondays last summer, having had his fill of exhaustive world gigging, and spurred on by a longing to return to London to restart his solo career.

He’s spent the past 6 months writing and recording new material. Collaborations on the horizon include Peter Hook, The Infadels, Adam from Babyshambles, and more. Showing a lyrical nous to match its hooky guitar lines, the ‘Blaggers N’ Liars’ EP is brimming with mescal slugging, bluesy psyche-rock. ‘Lizard King’, is the swaggering, riff-filled opener, followed by the three minutes of vitriolic speed pop that is ‘Blaggers N’ Liars’.

‘Easy’ is a blues-soaked missive about life’s ‘chancers’, while ‘Satanic Circus Mask’ closes the EP with a double-dipped psychedelic ride circa 2008. Born of a mind that at 28 has already been opened as wide as the Watford Gap and come out fighting (you don’t tour with Shaun Ryder and return an innocent), the
‘Blaggers & Liars EP’ is the first hint of Kav’s adventures this year; with another single and his debut album to follow.

How are you? Where does this Q&A find you?

Sitting in my home studio wondering when the rain's going to stop.

How did the recording sessions for your new release go?

They have been amazing! We went into Fortress studios in September & we just zoned into the energy and vibe of the place. We have met some good people Sean, Bolty and Marc Waterman have been nothing short of complete Lords and the whole Fortress family. If you could imagine a friendly retreat for Pirates well this is the place. I remember going into the sessions after a killer few weeks, life changing decisions losing a few
friends, people trying to break down my door, leaving the Mondays, waking up in a random place mentally
and physically, being owed money by people who don't pay & generally feeling like the end of the World was
around the corner. Jim (drums) sliced his finger open within the first 5 mins of setting his drums up & then
passed out. We gave him a kick and then we recorded Blaggers N' Liars live & we captured the energy and
soul that we needed to make the track. The words just came out straight away. It set a precedent for the
whole album and sound and captured everything I could of wanted it too. Lizard King followed. We then
realised we had found our musical home. We have been continually recording tracks for our album at
Fortress since. We recorded Satanic Circus Mask and Easy in November and that was it, the E.P was
complete.
What goals did you set yourself before you started recording?
At first we wanted to just record something real and completely organic and honest. Something that captured
the way we felt and the music we played when we first got that kick from music at the age of 12, when we
first decided to form a band and play! Something that excited us! And meant more than just churning out crap
for the hell of it. We wanted it to make us get up & feel like we wanted to do something that made us buzz.
What do you feel are your own limitations when it comes to creating/writing music?
I don't know as we haven't felt limited yet but we don't like to put a limit on anything. This sound is very Dirty
and Rock N' Roll with a blues edge the songs have big chorus's and the verses tell a story influenced by my
everyday experiences or certain feelings I may only feel for 5 minutes, or sometimes years. I feel you are
always evolving but it's great to go back to the raw energy that influences you to get into a band in the first
place. This is just what we want to do naturally at the moment.
Tell us 3 of your favourite songs from your career and the inspiration behind them?
I would have to say Playground Superstar which was a song that I wrote with The Happy Mondays when I
first started working with them and the songs I'm doing as part of my own project now. I mean there are over
50 tracks that haven't come out. But my favourite stuff is what we are doing now. So far I would have to say
Blaggers and Liars and maybe Lizard King which is also on the EP. I find it difficult to name favourite tracks,
as each track holds a story and they are like memories, they all have a place for different reasons. I suppose
the current music you are working on should be your favourite at the time because it is what you are into at
that stage in your life.
Tell us about your worst live show yet?
When I was about 16 in my first band we played a charity gig at the YMCA in Leicester. Our drummer was
left handed and the headline band didn't want us to change the drum kit. I think I broke a guitar string on the
first track and the bass amp blew. I think we were pretty much laughed of stage. We weren't very good either,
so we probably saved the audience from a real ear bashing. Me and my friends ended up turning a Robin
Reliant over (3 wheeler old car) that was parked outside and my mates ran off. It ended up belonging to this
huge biker geezer and I ended up getting a kicking from him and his boys. I remember running through the
bar knocking drinks over by the time I finally got out of the place I had half the Pub chasing me although that
could have been at place called the Royal Mail behind Leicester train station.
What are the bands plans for the rest of the year?
We are going to put out our EP on 21st April, another single at the end of June & finish the album, with a
view to getting this out at the end of the summer. Tour the U.K go back over to the States and Canada. Take
the music to as many places around the World as possible.
How would you describe your own/bands sound, or what do you hate being labelled as?
Dirty rock n' roll and electric blues at this moment in time. I don't know really whatever people make of it they
do everyone has a different opinion which is a good thing. Our sound is influenced by so much but it has it's
own stamp.
Who is currently moving you musically at the moment?
I dig Black Rebel Motor Cycle CLUB I've loved them since the first album, they excite me in the same way as
when I first listened to Nirvana or Oasis, The Stone Roses or Primal Scream. I'm also into The Black Angels,
Brian Jones town Massacre and that whole Psychedelic rock scene that seems to be surfacing again. There
are so many good bands vibing around again & finally getting exposure, controlling there own destinies. We
also recently had Josh the singer from Eastern Conference Champions play bass and keys with us in LA and
that was most definitely a moving experience.
What album changed your life and why?
I'll have to name a few as there have been some real life changers; Appetite For Destruction by Guns N'
Roses because it was the first album I bought for myself and I hadn't ever heard anything so dangerous,
dark, dirty and loud, and I was so young. Sergeant Pepper by the Beatles my Aunties record, she was out of
the country and she had left all of her old 12inches round my parents house and it was the first record I put
on our record player and it blew me away. I was about 10 years old I couldn't stop playing it or looking at the
album sleeve and I was hooked after that I went Beatles crazy! Both Stone Roses albums as I was blown
away by the energy of the songs and the vibe on the first one & on the second I was completely inspired by
the musicianship, blues sound and groove. Never Mind by Nirvana because it made me form my first band!
Oasis Definitely Maybe, It’s hard to just point out one reason but it made me decide that being in a band was
what I wanted to do. I was about 15 and it played a massive part in my life, the way I dressed and looked.
‘It's Great When your Straight’ by Black Grape. I used to play it ion my cassette walkman, walking to school
in the mornings. Last but not least "THE DADDY OF THEM ALL" by The Space Monkeys because me and
my friends use to play it at parties after clubs, before we left to go out with our mates and at all the places we
use to hangout . I'm missing out so many as I'm a music junkie and a lot of albums have had major effects on
me over the years; including albums by the Small Faces, The Kinks, The Zombies, John Lennon, The Who,
Dylan, The Band, Led Zeppelin but the one that I still play all the time today is STICKY FINGERS by The
Rolling Stones. They are probably my favourite band of all time and I don't think I've ever played an album
more.
Your proudest achievement so far?
I try not to think about it too much as I have so much to achieve yet, but probably being alive playing music
and buzzin off it!
If you could erase one single/album from history (your own or someone else's) which would it be and
why? Oh, the Barbie Girl song by the Danish band I forget their name, but I blame that song for British small
town centre mindless violence. That track is responsible for chaos on the streets of Britain outside locals
pubs everywhere.
How do you see yourself altering the band and your sound in the future? is there anything you wish
to attempt in the future that's inspiring you right now?
Wherever the wind takes us! I won't know till I do it! It’s all about expressing yourself, I don't like planning and
turning it into some kind of science project for school! Whatever I'm feeling at the time will find its way to the
surface some how.
I love letting whatever comes out breath in the purist sense. Whether it's getting classical instruments in,
blasting Moogs, playing Drums on coke cans, tuning all your Guitar strings to E and attempting to play
acoustic gigs without practicing. I love being educated by music and sounds and styles and trying as many
different things as possible, but not just for the hell it! Because it feels right. I'm sure I will always change, as
it's what we do as people.
A rumour you'd like to start about yourself, or one you'd like stopped?
Not really!
What drives you & What are your fears?
Love, hate, anger ,emotion, facts, life, always chasing that kick! Good or bad whether I'm happy or sad I've
always been driven & I have my reasons. I don't entertain fear, it's not healthy, not any more anyway.
The revolution comes, who would you like to be first against the wall (and if you're feeling
particularly bitchy, a second, third, fourth and so on...)?
In this day and age it’s probably best not to say, as people can get a little over sensitive!
Best piece of advice you'd give to aspiring musicians, or the best piece of advice you were given
when you started?
Forget about anything else in your life because this is it! And this will take over everything you do. You won’t
be able to do the things your friends do! Don’t think about it too much just do it! Be prepared to lose friends,
get screwed, and be skint, but if you really want it, it's a small price to pay because it's worth the kicks. You
just have to accept your life is going to be completely different, whether you make a success of it or not.
Don't be afraid of change, always listen to your gut instincts and make bold decisions, don't worry about
being wrong because you can't beat the excitement.
If you're in a car going at the speed of light, and someone turns the headlamps on, would they do
anything?
Depends whether they are behind you or in front of you?
My favourite tracks change daily! I'm a huge music fan! I've got loads of stuff! so I can't just pick out
the best five but I can give you a rough idea of what I have played over the last few days. The tracks
are not in any order!
TOP 5 IPOD TUNES
1.THE BLACK ANGELS "YOUNG MEN DEAD"
I just love it! The track moves and pulls you in!
2.BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB "BERLIN"
BRMC have been my favourite band for the last few years , since their first album in 2001 or
something. I play this track to leave the house when the rain keeps pouring and the wind is blowing!
3. THE CHAMBERS BROTHERS "PEOPLE GET READY"
I hadn't listened to this track for ages and just pulled it out the other day and it just fitted my mood
what a tune! I then found myself digging out the album "THE TIME HAS COME" what a gem! The
Small Faces meets The Funk Brothers.
4. THE ROLLING STONES "CAN'T YOU HEAR ME KNOCKING"
When I'm sitting at home with a guitar in hand! This is the one to play along with it's brilliant! I just
turn it up and have it! Sticky Fingers is probably one of the best albums of time!
5. THE ROLLING STONES "I DON'T KNOW WHY"
Sometimes you need to chill put your feet up and re-visit your soul! Have a little think about the past
and what is inspiring the future. The way Jagger delivers his vocals like nothing short of a LORD!!!
And if that’s not enough this track has one of the best guitar solos ever!
‘BLAGGERS N’ LIARS’ EP THIS FEELING RECORDS RELEASED 21 APRIL - May 2008