Kendra Morris - Next - Blue - VINYL LP

With her fourth full-length album of original material, idiosyncratic singer/songwriter Kendra Morris invites you to join her in the DIY kaleidoscope world of Next. Morris's latest record for Karma Chief strips away the veneers of layered production and slick sounds to create an album that may be Kendra at her most authentic, one in which the creative process is vibrant, beautiful, and messy, buoyed by heart and the imperfectly perfect now. A concept album in reverse, Next ties Kendra's cast of characters (including her band guitarist Supremo InchPremoInch Massiv, bassist Monti Miramonti, and drummer Chauncey Yearwood) to a vintage board game in the spirit of Milton Bradley's finest retro dice-rolling moments. Travel along Next's block-to-block journey, and this universe reveals itself as a mosaic of corals, creams, and pale lilac tiles. You can hear the sonic palette resonate with Morris's influences and inspirations. Decades of New York sounds and voices bend and blend at the seams of these tracks-a world where the Brill Building and Warhol's Factory thrive on the same block while Blondie and the Frightnrs explore rocksteady sounds. Doo-wop and boom-bap soundtrack a UHF network's worth of cut-and-paste stylings, all the while paced by Morris, an artist equally at home behind the lens as she is in front of a microphone. Next is an album of firsts. The album's extended gestation provided Morris with an opportunity to explore her ideas and demos. InchI've been living in this record for over a year,Inch says Morris. InchI've always been a writer, and [Next] was a chance to write a record from scratch on my own.Inch The New York (by way of Loveland, Ohio) production is co-helmed by Kendra Morris and Leroi Conroy. It's production trades the steel and chrome sleekness for a more personal and scaled-down sound, exposing the songcraft. While earlier albums were awash in IMA

The word Babble brings two things to mind A person pouring out their thoughts with reckless abandon, or a gentle sound coming from water cascading over rocks as it flows past. In the case of this reissue from Kendra Morris, Babble is a sublime melding of these two meanings. The original in 2016 came in the form of a self-released EP. A fan cult favorite; it has now grown to include three additional tracks Playing Games, Dial Back and Ride On. The journey through human emotion is accomplished through Kendra's songs, bringing us, the listeners, into her enchanted world of pain and strength, feeling renewed on the other side. The ability to take trepidation, desire, and insecurities and turn them into comfort and make you want to get up and move with them is a selfless gift she grants to us.With the support of Karma Chief Records (A division of Colemine Records), Babble is getting the official it deserves.

Kendra Morris's Nine Lives, to be released on Karma Chief Records (a division of Colemine Records) in early 2022, marks not only the culmination of the decade since the of her first LP Banshee, but also a turning point in Kendra's life. Nine Lives heralds the beginning of a new chapter; tag, and an evolution to the next level of adulthood. This collection of her original songs encapsulates moments from what could be nine lifetimes. Kendra, while very much a New Yorker and veteran of almost 2 decades on the NYC scene, hails from Florida and aesthetically embodies the broader sense of American culture, bringing to her contemporary sound influences found in music and cinema dating back to the mid 20th century. Her music conjures imagery evocative of road trips to weird and wonderful places. Concurrently a visual artist, filmmaker and animator, Kendra harnesses the feline nine lives metaphor repeatedly. In the context of the chapters of her musical trajectory alone, we see at least 9 lives. From discovering multi-tracking on a karaoke machine as a child, to playing in bands in Florida, moving to NYC and creating music alone on an 8 track, releasing her first 2 LPs on Wax Poetics, releasing her 2016 EP Babble and collaborating with DJ Premier, 9th Wonder, MF Doom, Czarface, Ghostface Killah, Dennis Coffey, and David Sitek, to name a few. The life of this multi-disciplinarian artist contains units of time and story lines through which we can all relate to universal themes of love, loss and overcoming one's fears. Kendra, never ceasing to heed her spiritual calling to continue creating music and art, no matter what, has no plans of slowing down but a belief in only evolving, eager to begin experiencing her next nine lives.