KINO's first album PICTURE was released on InsideOut Records on 28 February 2005 (22 February in the USA). It was released as a standard single-disc CD, and also a limited edition digipack with a DVD featuring video footage of four songs (Leave A Light On, Letting Go, Swimming In Women, and Losers' Day Parade) recorded for the Rockpalast TV show at the Underground, Koln in December 2004.
The track listing for PICTURE is listed below. You can read an insight into each song from Kino frontman John Mitchell here.
Kino singer and guitarist John Mitchell provides us with an insight to each of the songs on the album below.
LOSERS' DAY PARADE
...nine minutes of pure prog!! Starts nasty and ends that way too, with a nod to The Beatles in the middle. Check out the Holdsworth impersonation...nah, only kidding, i wish!! A fictional account of an emotionally disturbed musician who gets sick of being cajoled by his record company and sabotages the MD's car. Seriously. Watch out you lot!
LETTING GO
The chorus reminds John Beck of A-Ha. Dunno why. It speaks for itself really. We were inspired by The Who's 'Won't Get Fooled Again' on this one, and why not?
LEAVE A LIGHT ON
I was definitely in a Police mood that day. A bit of a tribute to U.K. in the middle. Content? When you have to leave someone for a while there's an onus to say something profound, isn't there?!?! Quite what that should be is beyond me.
SWIMMING IN WOMEN
Okay, so this is fairly avant garde. The middle section sounds quite Zeppy to me. What's it about? You'd have to ask John Beck. It's largely at odds with itself, which is waaay cool.
PEOPLE
'People might pass you by...' Basically about the transience of relationships. Someone you might know all your life can leave in an instant. And maybe that's how it's supposed to be. Deep huh? :-) Musically I have no idea what page we were on!! It kicks a** though.
ALL YOU SEE
Another oldie...but a goodie. Pete came up with what we now refer to as the 'Eleanor Rigby' strings in the bridge which I adore. Funnily, as I look at the Nuendo sessions over the past however many months, a lot of the keyboard parts have ended up with strange titles, largely down to cheeky recording assistant Benny. 'Bob's Bike', 'Morning Campers' and 'Dr Who' to name but a few. The titles do however reflect the noises therein and thus serve a purpose. 'ALL YOU SEE' is quite a beautiful song and is the closest we get to a ballad I suppose. The term 'Kensington Wife' springs to mind over the subject matter. And that's all I'm gonna say.
PERFECT TENSE
Well there had to be a pop song in there somewhere......and this fluctuates between 5/4 and 6/4 just to throw the cat among the pigeons. Lyrically it's about religious paranoia. To quote Pete, 'it's got a Sting-like intelligence about it'. I'm inclined to agree.
ROOM FOR TWO
Reminds John Beck of Cockney Rebel...if they had ever played in 7/8 I guess. It's a happy song about a nasty theme. And it's quite poppy as well.
HOLDING ON
Okay..see 'LETTING GO'. This is the very first thing that was written for this collaboration. It's the only acoustic guitar you will find on the album. It sounds like it's going time-signature-nuts, but don't be tricked, we're not THAT clever!!! :-) I'm fond of this cos it's epic sounding, and Chris Maitland, Pete and I go nuts in the middle. In fact, so does John Beck. Nice.
PICTURE
John Beck wrote the piano and I wrote the lyric. I love this tune. It reminds me of an epic film soundtrack. It's about someone very dear to me.
So there you have it. For now you're just going to have to imagine how it all sounds! We hope you like it.
