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KEMO



Last Updated: 11/25/2009

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Status: Single
City: NYC / Hawaii / London
Country: UK
Signup Date: 12/27/2006

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Wednesday, November 11, 2009 
Born and raised in America and then relocating to Europe, Jimmy Blitz has been fortunate to experience two very different cultures. Having always had a burning passion for music he joined choir groups and a band in high school. In 2007, Jimmy Blitz had his first global release under his artist name KEMO. With further single releases under his belt, he teamed up with Drum & Bass superstar LYNX to form LYNX & KEMO, who have since been referred to as "the most exciting new act in electronic music" (IDJ Magazine). LYNX & KEMO have been a heavyweight DJ & MC duo on the scene for two years, touring Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Russia, Canada, USA, Japan, and all over the UK & Europe. Now LYNX & KEMO have finished their debut album ‘The Raw Truth’, which was released on Soul:R June 1st 2009 and has proved itself to be yet another boundary-breaking masterpiece. It has been referred to as "Electronic Genius" by Fabio at BBC Radio 1 and "Brilliant" by Laurent Garnier. At this years DNBA Awards, the LYNX & KEMO album was nominated as Best Album 2009 and Jimmy Blitz was nominated as Best Newcomer Vocalist. Jimmy Blitz has a thick American accent and a warm, gravelly, textured voice. Compared to Tricky and Faithless with his musical voice, Jimmy Blitz has even more to offer to the voice-over world. Speaking in a casual, professional or sexy way comes naturally to this professional vocalist. jimmyblitz@live.com

1:24 PM 
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Wednesday, September 16, 2009 

LYNX & KEMO DATA TRANSMISSION MIX: 

http://www.datatransmission.co.uk/podcas..t.aspx?ID=75

"This week's DT Podcast is quite simply one of the finest we've ever had. The awesome LYNX & KEMO give a taste of what you can hear on their debut album THE RAW TRUTH with some seriously forward-thinking drum & bass. This ain't like nothing you've heard before."

10:26 AM 
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Tuesday, September 15, 2009 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiD9HOD2Ons

The whole world's on a carousel!

8:52 PM 
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Sunday, September 13, 2009 
Yes yes, hope all is well with you and yours! here are the lyrics many of you have been asking for, sorry for the delay... http://www.therawtruth.info/?page_id=101 BLESS kemo
11:20 PM 
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Saturday, July 18, 2009 
Yes people,

our "The Raw Truth LP" is nominated for BEST ALBUM

and

KEMO is nominated for BEST NEWCOMER MC


show your appreciation and vote here...




THX!!!!!!!

LYNX & KEMO




8:26 PM 
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Thursday, July 09, 2009 
Finally finished the official music video for “Global Enemies”. Enjoy!

The critically acclaimed “Raw Truth LP” is available on ITunes… Give it a listen here…. “LYNX & KEMO – The Raw Truth” on ITunes
5:01 PM 
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Tuesday, May 12, 2009 



Attential all producers!


This month sees the release of LYNX & KEMO’s epic D&B journey ‘The Raw Truth’ on Marcus Intalex’s evergreen imprint SOUL:r. Deep, funky and with more soul than 100 Blaze records, IDJ loved it so much we actually reviewed it (and featured LYNX, the man responsible for 2008’s massive D&B club smash ‘Disco Dodo’) three months too early.


With “The Raw Truth LP” out on June 1, we rang Marcus to see how we could remind you how massive this album deserves to be without resorting to tired and turgid repetition. “Get me a remix…” were his simple words.


This competition is open to producers of ALL styles, no just D&B. As this issue states, genres are about as useful as a solar-powered glo-stick these days. ‘The Raw Truth’ is a fine example, as LYNX & KEMO skillfully join the dots between D&B, Jazz, Downtempo, Soul and traditional tribal rhythms.


A label dedicated to longevity and not just fly-by-night dancefloor bangers, obviously SOUL:r aren’t going to release any old tat, but if you think you got what it takes to complement the LYNX & KEMO single ‘Global Enemies’ with your own original work, read on to find out exactly how you can do it.


Download the parts from:

www.soulr.com/comp/global.zip 


Then before July 3rd, upload your finished stems to:

www.soundcloud.com/rocketsciencemedia/dropbox


All entries will be judgd by Lynx, Kemo and Marcus Intalex and the winner will be notified by SOUL:r. As with all rmix competitions, originality and creative flare are essential! …


And that, to quote LYNX & KEMO, is the raw truth. Good Luck!

(IDJ Magazine June 2009)

10:50 PM 
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Monday, April 27, 2009 


http://www.therawtruth.info/?p=41

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We are will recruiting for street teams. Sign up via kemomc@googlemail.com and get rewarded with exclusives

1:47 PM 
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Saturday, April 25, 2009 
9:51 AM 
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Friday, March 27, 2009 


"The most conceptually brilliant drum & bass record of the modern era... A masterpiece"
- Knowledge Mag




LYNX & KEMO - Stranger than fiction

Words: Ewen Cook

Tantalisingly postponed back in September (perhaps by angry American government officials!), ‘The Raw Truth’ – the debut album from Lynx & Kemo – is finally with us. And good things come to those who make very, very good drum and bass…

In the distance, just behind the tall, rangy, bearded figure and his well-built, steely companion, Kmag can see the silhouette of an armed guard advancing menacingly from the shadows of the enormous building. Beneath his coat, the dull gleam of a machine gun is unmistakable.

From the left, another uniformed official appears from a doorway and beckons the duo abruptly with a sharp flick of his hand. They follow, and after a momentary conversation, are ushered around a corner and out of sight. Kmag sweats uneasily. The operation is not going as planned…

This is not a joke. Nor is it the recounting of a dream that a giddy Kmag had at the thought of interviewing Lynx & Kemo, makers of the the most conceptually brilliant drum & bass record of the modern era. Nope – it is the real thing. In the raw.

The truth of the matter is that Kmag is standing nervously outside the US Embassy in central London, directly under the glare of a gigantic bronze eagle – the eye-catching centrepiece of the enormous Embassy roof. As photoshoots go, it’s certainly been one to remember, with Lynx and MC Kemo suddenly carted off for questioning by twitchy security personnel - for whom the sight of camera equipment and confident young artists posing with their fists in the air evidently signalled trouble.

Thankfully, our dynamic duo return in one piece – but only after an eerie few minutes. The black t-shirts, clenched knuckles and large frames of the two young stars had evidently touched a nerve with the higher echelons of global law and order. All of which is rather fitting – because ‘The Raw Truth’ is about about to touch a nerve with the entire drum & bass hierarchy, right across the world. Released – also somewhat fittingly – on the revered Soul:r imprint under the masterful eye of Marcus Intalex, and featuring a seriously diverse roster of collaborative talents (Alix Perez, Henree, Bango Collective, DRS, Spoonface, Master X and Dennis Jones to name a few), the most musically confident duo in d&b have quite simply put together a masterpiece. If you were hoping for 15 ‘Disco Dodo’s, you are in for one hell of an education.

“The album isn’t really ‘Disco Dodo’-esque at all,” purrs the languid, towering Kemo, as he, Lynx and Kmag gratefully retire to the safe confines of a nearby pub. “But it does of course have those same incredible Lynx sounds – the orchestral elements and the way he builds huge, powerful crecendos using absence and space.

“Lynx’s intricate way of working with percussion, gaps and sonic drama is definitely represented, but the crossover into the rave realm isn’t really there in that ‘Disco Dodo’ sense. The crossover aspect of the album exists more in the way the vibe moves fluidly through trip hop, hip hop, dubstep and other elements.”

And how. Widening out the unique aperture of sound that burst into being with the edgy, claustrophobic banger ‘Global Enemies’ – the release that opened the world’s eyes to this highly cerebral, intuitive, experimental partnership back in 2007 – ‘The Raw Truth’ is a uniquely coherent record, comprised of genuine songs rather than dancefloor fodder or even DJ tools. 

And, from the heavily pregnant pause on ‘Camera’ that joins Kemo’s ghostly, doubled-up lyrics to a staccato patchwork of minimal, slender beats and hypnotic, organic, slaloming bass, ‘The Raw Truth’ is a truly breathtaking ride of elaborate songwriting, all delivered with a killer, stripped down simplicity. 

“One of the things we worked on was getting a balance of great club music and lyrically interesting songs,” says the stocky, measured Lynx. “There are political themes through to dark and emotional epics! The album reflects the direction we feel drum and bass should go in, i.e. music that not only works in clubs. Nearly all d&b tunes are built for clubs nowadays, and I think the scene has much more to offer than that.” 
 It certainly has – and the fact that one of drum & bass’s most celebrated young producers has released a debut album dominated by full vocal tracks speaks volumes for Lynx’s conviction. From start to finish, the detailed, orchestral compositions that have become the much envied signature of this first-class engineer are imprinted with the luxurious textures of Kemo’s moody, moving lyrics: a patchwork of the political and the spiritual the like of which d&b just hasn’t seen before – certainly not in such a concept-driven, dedicated long-player format. 

“Expect a lot of surprises,” says Kemo, his fantastically sonorous, poetic tones filling the room effortlessly. “And it’s not just a collection of songs, either: they all fit together like scenes from a movie, forming an entire world of sound. Expect an album that you will listen to at home and on the go: on your headphones, daydreaming, diving into and through spheres beyond space and time. Personally, I would place it into my CD rack between Massive Attack, Wu Tang, Burial, Tricky and The Prodigy!” 
 
 Bold words indeed, but even a cursory listen is to begin to understand where the assured, confident Kemo is coming from. The combination of deep, dark-light grooves, cavernous sub-bass and lilting vocal echoes is simply irresistible. On the Dennis Jones-starring ‘Apocalypse’, multilayered rapping and melodious harmonies question the “million stars in the sky,” amid handclaps and delicious bubbles of knotted bass. While on the zippy, addictive ‘Hotriders’, the boomeranging low-end arpeggios and dynamic vocal refrain carve out a stepping rhythmic workout of serious sass. Oh yes – amid the fury, there’s oodles of funk too.

Lynx is keen to stress, however, that there are no clichéd tricks of production on show whatsoever – the kind of sonic gimmicks thrown into much modern d&b to give the music that ‘next level’ twist. Instead, ‘The Raw Truth’ aims for something far rarer: a timeless sound.

“Tonally, I suppose you could say it covers the whole drum & bass spectrum,” he admits, “but importantly I don’t think the album sounds very ‘now’, at all – if you see what I mean! And that’s the point. What I hope is that in five years’ time someone will hear it and they won’t be able to place whether it’s late-1990s, early-2000s, whatever.” 

Coming from someone who can so evidently make bunker-busting, fiercely innovative anthems, this singular vision gives even more weight to the calibre of Lynx's ambition. So too for the the Hawaii-born, Germany-raised MC Kemo, an artist from an intriguingly varied musical background who has worked on many other projects: with labels such as Combination Records and producers such as Matt Flores, Douglas Greed and Zed Bias. This is a creative team with far bigger fish to fry than just banging out a slew of killer 12”s.

The unfettered artistic fusion between the pair began organically moving towards an album project during 2007 – a bond that was blissfully (and crucially) unimpeded by restrictions of genre or format. “It was directly after ‘Global Enemies’ and ‘Carnivale’ that we started writing in earnest,” says Lynx, “but at that stage we weren’t even sure that it was definitely an album we were working on. 

“Even when we began on the LP for real, we didn’t actually do any drum & bass tunes for the first few months! We found that this really helped, because it formed the conceptual basis of the album. “

“I think it facilitated a more honest approach – to go even deeper,” agrees Kemo. “We both have a lot to express. Working on an album enables you to take more than just a single snapshot of the world today. It allows you to make a feature film. Some find the endless possibilities limiting or overwhelming, but we welcomed it, as it allowed us to create something bigger.”

“With singles you can just keep wiping the slate clean and starting afresh,” chimes in Lynx, “but with an album you really need a vibe. I think it’s safe to say that Marcus left us with an amazing amount of creative control, compared to most other labels. He’s been amazing. Other people would have been trying to ‘fine tune’ how it was gonna be before we’d even got in the studio, but not him.”

“That said,” he grins, “I think we did scare Marcus a bit at the beginning, because we showed him about five or six tunes, none of which were d&b! He was like ‘Er, that’s cool, but where’s the drum & bass?’!”

“There are probably eight or nine non-d&b tracks that came out of the project that aren’t on the album,” reveals Kemo. “Some are deep, industrial, almost emo-sounding, with echoes of Nine Inch Nails in there!”  
 “Hopefully the tracks that weren’t right for ‘The Raw Truth’ will find their way onto an alternative Lynx & Kemo release in the not so distant future,” adds Lynx. “There’s some great stuff there and I’d still love people to hear it.” 

Clearly, your average drum & bass duo this is not. It is to Lynx’s eternal credit that while his musical education came as a young studio engineer and manager at Airtight in Chichester, watching the likes of Friction, Mampi Swift, Stakka, Skynet, and Skinny carve out the bullet-tough anthems of the future, his own gift to drum & bass has been to breathe new musical life into it.

In ‘The Raw Truth’, he and his creative soulmate have captured the breathless, paranoid tension of society’s modern political minefield and laced it with a dynamic rhythmic urgency – a sense of endlessly significant motion, of depth, of dark and light, of snatched moments of magic and sorrow…

It feels like a long wait since that last-minute postponement in September, but this is a project that is tied to a far deeper, more distant trajectory – as Kemo so eloquently concludes. “Personally, I didn’t actually want to make an album for a long time. I just wasn’t ready. I needed to mature as both an individual and as an artist, developing my songwriting skills and voice. I wasn’t just born with a gift; I needed to develop my craft.

“But everything happens for a reason, and I was connected with Lynx to form a perfect team. His music and my vocals fuse into something with the potential to impact not only the d&b scene but also the world as such. I strongly believe in change. And I like to think of this album as the soundtrack to it. Cinematic, orchestral, revolutionary…”

And what could Kmag possibly add to that? Finally, the waiting for a classic-in-waiting is over. And the truth, most definitely, is out there.

www.myspace.com/stevelynx

www.myspace.com/kemosun

www.therawtruth.info 
 


***PULL-QUOTE 1*** 
 “I don’t think the album sounds very ‘now’, at all. And that’s the point.” 
 - Lynx 



***PULL-QUOTE 2*** 
 “I’d place ‘The Raw Truth’ into my CD rack between Massive Attack, Wu Tang, Burial, Tricky and The Prodigy.” 
 - MC Kemo



***BOX 1*** 
 Top secrets: Lynx reveals five classfied files… 
 
1. Lynx & Kemo didnt actually meet until after their first two releases ‘Global Enemies’ and ‘Carnivale’ had been released on Soul:r.

2. Lynx engineered for Curiosity Killed the Cat many years ago

3. Kemo will be releasing a solo EP in 2009 on Combination Recordings

4. Kemo recorded some of his vocals for ‘The Raw Truth’ with the super-talented Matt Flores in Dusseldorf, Germany. Check out his music at www.myspace.com/mattflores01  

5. Lynx enjoys karting and being a computer nerd on Xbox Live in his spare time. Who wants a race?!



***BOX 2*** 
 Restricted arias: Kemo gives clearance on his Top 5 most influential tracks…

1. This one’s a tie! Public Enemy – ‘By The Time I Get to Arizona’ and NWA – ‘A Hundred Miles And Runnin’’: The two greatest rap groups of all time deliver the two most powerful rap songs ever. Nuff said.

2. Stevie Wonder – ‘I Don't Know Why I Love You’. The greatest male artist of all times lets out all of his frustration and pain with astonishingly direct and authentic delivery. Straight from the soul to the record.

3. Gil Scott Heron – ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’. Funky, fresh and revolutionary. What a mix.

4. Tool – ‘Aenima’. More truth. More frustration at the world. Maynard James Keenan has a gorgeous voice and the backing and arrangement perfectly reflect the stages of “Weltschmerz”.

5. Tricky – ‘Christiansands’. OH, how the voices of Tricky and Martina blend together so beautifully. The song itself masterfully reflects the fact that we are born alone and die alone. We are alone. But we are only lonely if we don't like the person we are with.

(Big words.. thx so much Ewen!)

12:30 PM 
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