Kaput – Queen City Sounds and Art

Kaput Saws Into the Fake Security of Complacency on Industrial Post-Punk Single “Small Talk”

The accents on the layered rhythms of “Small Talk” by Kaput gives it an especially heady pace. The sawblade edginess of the synth sound frames the vocals well as they ring out and echo ever so slightly like there’s a bit of dub production to the whole song. Tones whorl and rattle, buzz and fry lending an era of menace and confrontation. It’s a song about complacency and how it can’t protect you forever. When atrocity is happening right in front of you in forms that only a completely delusional person could pretend is something else. The line “Break your neck to look away” speaks to the cost of this level of self-deception and the effort required. “The lies you tell/It’s gonna be ok/It’s all gonna be ok/It’s not you today/You’re not afraid” also hits hard. Without being topical it seems clear the song is about so much of what’s going on in the world right now and not necessarily the obvious subjects of genocide, fascism, political malfeasance, police brutality, the crushing reality of wealth concentration and hovering pandemics but also climate change and how that’s the elephant in every room. The song is just one of a debut album full of commanding songs that are an evocation of ambient anxiety, desperation, insecurity, anger and sadness running rampant. That album titled I was released April 25, 2025 digitally and available as limited edition vinyl. Listen to “Small Talk” on Spotify and follow Chicago’s Kaput at the links provided.

Kaput on Instagram

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Kaput on YouTube

KAPUT Claws Back the Peace of Personal Time on Exhilarating Post-Punk Single “Sucker”

The wiry momentum of “Sucker,” the latest single from Chicago art punks KAPUT is seething with distortion and a kind of desperate exhaustion. That lends the song an edge that lends its pointed commentary about the seemingly constant static coming your way just getting through modern life and the demands and expectations for you constantly in terms of perceived duties, obligations and attention. Amid the claustrophobic, urgent cacophony and persistent rhythm Nadia Garofalo’s vocals provide a human clarity that becomes so poignant in the final chorus of “Hey give me a minute/Well what about me” as it speaks directly to how everything is demanded of you in late capitalism down to the any spare seconds and if you don’t at least try to claim that back without having to justify your own needs to not have every moment of life spoken for by someone or something else you’ll never get it. Anyone that has worked a regular job in modern America or anywhere else where the technocrats are selling their tools of holding everyone accountable for every minute through workplace surveillance systems of some kind and how that “striving” culture bleeds into everything will recognize the spirit of this song immediately. Whatever happened to just living and having time to have your mind wander where it will and simply enjoying your time not dedicated to commerce? Can’t have that in oligarch-dominated human society, sucker. Resisting this extraction of the vitality of life can and should be one of the lines of resistance to commodifying everything to the nth degree. KAPUT makes that act seem exciting. Listen to the song “Sucker” on Spotify and follow KAPUT at the links below.

KAPUT on Instagram

KAPUT on Bandcamp

KAPUT on YouTube

Heavy Feelings Conjures the Essence of Feelings of Not Belonging on No Wave Gothic Rock Single “Breather”

Heavy Feelings, photo courtesy the artists

Heavy Feelings puts into words a difficult feeling to convey with accuracy on the “Breather” single. The title suggests multiple meanings including merely being a person who breathes like all humans must but also a need to get a break from feeling the pressure to conform instead of just be allowed to be different. To feel like you have to explain something about the way you are when you shouldn’t have to. And that sense of being stifled for nothing. The line “Someday I’ll run out of ways to explain there’s nothing to fix, it’s always this way, can’t find the right things to say” perfectly sums up the existential exhaustion you can reach when it feels like you’re being interrogated and picked apart by normies that feel like they have to figure out you can’t be just like them even if you’re not demanding they be like you. The urgent melodies and echoing vocals in the chorus express perfectly a discordant mood that is getting a bit of catharsis in the song’s asymmetrical structure and willingness to sprawl past the edges of conventional songwriting methods. It as its own kind of hooks and like the lyrics illustrate perfectly it demands acceptance on its own terms. If you like your post-punk a little more unconventional this song and the Anatomy EP (released December 20, 2024) are what you should make the effort to take in. Listen to “Breather” on Spotify and follow Heavy Feelings at the links below.

https://open.spotify.com/track/4Aq2gwL6I1VfUKCmfWYEIe

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KAPUT’s Frantic, Organic Beats and Haunting Spaciousness in “Runner” Evoke a Sense of a Calm in a Storm of Clearing Your Head of Intrusive Thoughts

KAPUT’s use of organic percussive tones to set both a frantic and headlong and languid beat in parallel on “Runner” mirrors the song’s themes perfectly. The way you can feel anxious and in a hurry while caught up in dreamlike moments in passages of fever dream calm when intrusive thoughts and ghosts of past and current concerns can get mixed up in distracting you from being in the moment. But in the rattles, clicks, clinks throughout the song sound like a shaking off of these drags on the mind. The resonant piano alongside Nadia Garofalo’s almost deadpan but more slightly weary vocal delivery casts the song in a seeming context of having been through this struggle before of working through getting to be able to reach a point of focus clear of the static of what’s been limiting you and tripping up the progress you’d like to be making. The rich textural rhythms and haunting spaciousness of the song gives it a truly unique sound that while stylistically is adjacent to post-punk is very much its own thing. Listen to “Runner” on Spotify and follow Chicago’s KAPUT at the links below.

KAPUT on Instagram

KAPUT on Bandcamp

KAPUT on YouTube

Kaput’s No Wave Post-punk Single “High Wire” is a Nightmarish Portrait of the Perils of Attention Seeking and Toxic Fandom

Chicago’s Kaput takes on the tensions between fandom and fame and the demands and expectations that exist mutually in the dark, post-punk song “High Wire.” The synths glisten ominously as percussion thuds splays with a seeming finality and the driving bass pairs with the electronic melody while Nadia Garofalo sings with what might be described as tense resignation. The chorus of “Caution is boring/We came for blood/If you tell me no one’s watching/Was it even worth your time” and later in the song with urgency “Give us everything, everything you’ve got” Garofalo swimming in the rhythmic cacophony and clatter at the end of the song captures the perverse and often toxic dependency of a certain way artists are encouraged to seek out attention at all times while their audience is conditioned to expect more and more with greater cost to the artist psychically and personally. It’s a way of things that has really extended to all areas of our lives to varying degrees as the barrier between ourselves and the commodification of our time and identity channeled into social media and the tendrils jobs and other realms of the economy get their grips into more of your time until you feel like you have nothing left because everything given isn’t enough. It is indeed as the song title suggests, a precarious balance with the potential to end badly. Kaput’s song dramatizes something that many of us feel in everyday life to varying degrees in music that’s harrowing, nightmarish and in the end cathartic. Listen to “High Wire” on Spotify and follow Kaput at the links below. Expect the debut album from Garofalo (ex-Ganser) and Brian Fox (Electrical Audio studio) in early 2025.