The KVB

The KVB shapes an ever-shifting cold wave aesthetic by fusing reverb-heavy production techniques with stripped-down electronics, underscoring the pair's atmospheric expertise. Early efforts like the 2012 debut album Always Then captured Kat Day and Nicholas Wood channeling the brittle rhythms and sonic intensity of both Cabaret Voltaire and the Jesus and Mary Chain. Subsequent phases incorporated the sleek, angular textures of 2018's Only Now Forever, the expansive horizons of 2021's Unity, and the shadowy, rhythmic pulses of 2024's Tremors.

Nicholas Wood, a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, launched the KVB as a solo endeavor in 2010 while based in Southampton, England. Under this initial setup the project delivered several limited cassette and vinyl editions, among them the single "The Black Sun" via FLA Records and the June 2011 EP Into the Night on Downwards Records. Vocalist, keyboardist, and visual artist Kat Day joined Wood that same year, enabling the release of Always Then in 2012 on Clan Destine Records. A productive 2013 opened with the February arrival of the second album Immaterial Visions on the Minimal Wave label Cititrax, followed in May by a remix EP that included reworkings from Regis and Silent Servant; November brought a reissue of the previously cassette-only 2011 recording Minus One through Anton Newcombe's A Records imprint.

During 2014 the duo traveled to Newcombe's Berlin facility to capture the Out of Body EP, issued later that year on A Records. Those sessions represented the first time the KVB recorded beyond their home setup and marked their initial collaboration with drummer Joe Dilworth, whose credits include Stereolab and Cavern of Anti-Matter. Day and Wood gathered additional experimental material from 2014 onto Mirror Being, released by Invada the following June. Further exploration of electronic textures defined 2016's Of Desire, tracked with vintage synthesizers drawn from Invada founder Geoff Barrow's holdings. The Fixation/White Walls EP surfaced in 2017, coinciding with a remastered five-year anniversary edition of Always Then, while Wood simultaneously debuted his solo outlet Saccades via a self-titled album.

Only Now Forever emerged in 2018 after the KVB adopted a more autonomous workflow, spending nearly a year recording inside their Berlin apartment. Wood and Day shifted direction once more for the next full-length, drawing from the austere aesthetic of unfinished luxury villas encountered during a 2019 stay in Spain; producer Andy Savours assisted in merging retro-futuristic synths and dancefloor rhythms with the project's shoegaze base on November 2021's Unity. Saccades issued its second album, Flowing Fades, that same year.

The KVB next aligned with Cleopatra for May 2023's Artefacts (Reimaginings from the Original Psychedelic Era). Marking the fiftieth anniversary of the initial Nuggets anthology, the collection featured Day and Wood transforming tracks by psych-rock originators such as the Castaways, the Troggs, and the Pretty Things into their signature dark electro-rock framework. Wood later released the third Saccades album, Land of the Hearth. Day and Wood returned to Invada for April 2024's Tremors, an album that revisited the project's industrial and post-punk roots while incorporating dystopian pop elements partly inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' short fiction on the mutable quality of truth.