Outerstate

Gondwana’s newest stars are West London’s Kessoncoda, aka drummer Tom Sunney and keyboardist Fil Sowa. Standing firm between acoustic tradition and electronica, they are founded on a unique blend of melodic ostinato-laced piano and unwavering drums. Drawing on their array of musical interests, Fil and Tom take influence from rock, electronica, ambient, breakbeat, and soundtracks for film and artists such as Squarepusher, Radiohead, and Clark, all hot-housed in their unique studio set-up, a shed at the bottom of Tom’s garden. Like former and present Gondwana Records label mates such as GoGo Penguin and Portico Quartet, there’s something strongly cinematic about Kessoncoda’s music, like a narrative arc which unfolds through different themes and moods, with an ebb-and-flow of intensity, as breath-taking swells of melody burst into being, eventually to resolve in a wondrous climax. There’s also a deliberate undercurrent of post Covid