Kid Kasio
Kid Kasio is singer songwriter Nathan Cooper from SE London.
Inspired by a school visit from 80’s perm sporting, synth maestro Paul Hardcastle, he begged for a keyboard for his eleventh birthday and was dually rewarded with the Casio SK-1, a keyboard with a whole three seconds of sampling capacity! Just enough to sample a burp and playback Axel F entirely in belches to the hilarity of friends and family.
The appeal was short lived and by age 13 he was scouring the pages of the now defunct trade paper Loot, for the then, unfashionable analogue synthesizers of an earlier era. He got the train to Thornton Heath and purchased a battered Roland SH-101 for ninety-five pounds (It was supposed to be £100 but he’d used the money for the train fare and a bag of chips on the way there). New synth acquired he was ready to set about changing the world, but then something happened... the 90’s.
Britain was in the grip of the Grunge era, bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam dominated the musical landscape. Even having a keyboard player in a band was deemed an embarrassment, especially one who based his look entirely on a cross between David Sylvian and Nick Rhodes, but Kasio battled on regardless, turning up to gigs with banks of ancient synthesizers and shoulder padded finery.
The 90’s wasn’t all cruel, the arrival of the euro dance genre and acts like Culture Beat and Corona in the middle part of the decade, meant melodic synth-pop had an outlet of sorts. Kasio got busy creating this sort of music for a succession of all singing all dancing “Boy Bands” who toured the country’s schools and under 18’s clubs. “We’d play a school lunchtime in the day and get mobbed and then drive to Wigan in the evening and get spat on from a balcony, it was pretty hit and miss” he remembers.
By the turn of the century Kasio began looking back for his musical inspiration and set about forming The Modern with school friend Chi Tudor Hart. Taking their cues from the sound and aesthetics of the early 80’s they captured a mood, that with the popularity of bands like The Killers and Franz Ferdinand was suddenly in vogue, and two years later they were signed to Universal and working with producer Stephen Hague (Pet Shop Boys, OMD, New Order) on their first album.
The project spawned an album and a single, which scarcely bothered the charts, but helped win the band a loyal following and some good press and an NME British tour. Unfortunately after some bad management decisions the band were disqualified from the charts on the release of their 2nd single after a Chart rigging incident, and was subsequently dropped. Angry, penniless and minus a record deal Kasio decided to call it a day.
Embarking on a period of intense song writing he co-wrote 4 songs for the Stephen Frears directed film Tamara Drewe, which his brother, British actor Dominic Cooper had a role in. The Soundtrack was a success and was even put forward for the nominations for Best original song in the 2011 Oscars, but it was the cheque from the royalties Kasio received, that was the catalyst that meant he could finally purchase his dream Synthesiser,and set about recording the songs that would make up his first album.
The paradigm of musical taste had shifted once again and artists like La roux and Frankmusik were aping the sounds of 80’s synth driven chart music. Kasio enlisted the help of guitarist Ben Todd and bass player Glen Bridges and with the assistance of producer Adrian Hall he set about recording the album he had always wanted to make.
Taking its cues from the white funk sound of the mid 80’s and artists like Nik Kershaw, Howard Jones and Thomson Twins, Kasio has created a sound that perfectly straddles 1985 with 2011. The project has met with immediate praise from the online press and with tours imminent it looks like 2011 could be Kasio’s year. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
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