Kid Kapichi’s quest for world domination has this morning been furthered by the announcement from local promoters JOY. that they will be hosting not one but two Kid Kapichi (pronounced “Kapee-chee”) shows at the ever-popular Concorde 2 on Madeira Drive, Brighton. These being the first two dates of the UK & Europe tour, where the Hastings outfit will go on to conquer Bristol, Oxford, Norwich, Newcastle, Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham and London, before heading off into Belgium, Netherlands, France, Germany, Poland and Czech Republic.
This big announcement hotly follows on from the release of their new single ‘Tamagotchi’ and also that new album ‘There Goes The Neighbourhood’ will be out on 15th March. It can be pre-ordered HERE.
Tickets for these two Brighton gigs will be going on sale at 10am on Friday 10th November. For show one, Thursday 28th March, tickets will be available HERE and HERE and tickets for show two Friday 29th March will be available HERE and HERE. I certainly wouldn’t hang around long in deciding whether to buy tickets or not as Kid Kapichi have previously sold out bigger venues including the iconic De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea – Review HERE.
Kid Kapichi consists of Ben Beetham (guitars, vocals), Eddie Lewis (bass), George Macdonald (drums) and Jack Wilson (vocals, guitars). Four twentysomethings with big personalities who’ve been making music together for over half their lives, in various configurations. Working in pubs, construction, motorcycle trade, anything. Driving nightshifts just to keep playing. Eight years of non-stop graft. “The bands that make it are the ones that don’t give up,” says Eddie. “We’ve sacrificed everything. Normal jobs, settling down, we put our lives completely on hold for our dreams.”
And the four have dreamed up something special as Kid Kapichi. A behemoth of a band on and off stage thanks to the Hastings scene that nurtured them, until they got their big break from Frank Carter – he invited them to play his birthday party then join him on a major tour. Their best songs explore racism, in-work poverty, mental health, violence, frustration and all-consuming love with honesty and humour. All their songs come studded with barbed wire hooks, bristling with the juddering shock of lived experience, the cathartic thrill of a balled-up fist relaxing into an air punch.
After putting out debut album ‘This Time Next Year’ independently in 2021, the band signed their first proper deal for follow-up ‘Here’s What You Could Have Won’. Deserved reward for all that graft. The 11 songs are an excellent showcase for the band’s bigger, punchier, ‘beat punk’ sound, produced with Dom Craik from Nothing But Thieves.
Comeback single ‘New England’ in January 2022 was their most explicitly political song yet, with a searing guest verse from Bob Vylan. It’s a brutal dissection of the xenophobic Little England mentality. They followed it with Partygate polemic ‘Party At No. 10’, praised by Liam Gallagher, which they tried to debut with a busking performance outside the nation’s most infamous rave venue – before being dissuaded by Downing Street’s armed police.
