K.D.A.P. (Kevin Drew) - Influences (2021)

‘Influences’ is the new album from Kevin Drew's solo instrumental electronic project K.D.A.P. - AKA Kevin Drew A Picture. The record is a slide show of intimate joyful moments playing out against a backdrop of a world on fire. It’s a dance record for the mind while the clubs are all closed, a rush-hour commute soundtrack for people stuck working from home. It’s a celebration of survival and an elegy for lost friends. It’s a reminder that excitement and anxiety often elicit the same heart-pounding sensation. And it’s the sound of someone who once forgot it in people remembering it in himself. “I didn't have anything to say on this record,” Kevin admits. “But I had so much to feel.”

Like many records you’ll hear this year, 'Influences' was a product of the pandemic. But it doesn’t so much capture the sound of lockdown as liberation, music unbound from the laws of traditional song structure and the crowd-pleasing pressures of fronting a popular rock band. But while the aptly-named Influences marks a return to the early ambient and electronic inspirations that first prompted Kevin to make music some 25 years ago, it expresses those old impulses through an entirely new language, and exercises them in a completely different environment. This isn’t a basement record; it’s an outdoor record, written in real time during long walks through the woods of southern England.