Review: Kevin ‘It Is What It Is’

There’s something strangely hypnotic about It Is What It Is, the new album from Osaka, Japan’s experimental psych krautrock band Kevin. They originally started as a four-piece in 2017, before gradually reducing to a three-piece and ultimately becoming the power duo we hear today, featuring brothers Yutaro Umemoto (guitar) and Yuichi Umemoto (vocals/drums/mixing).

This is their second release for West Midlands, UK-based Riot Season Records, following their 2022 album Aftermath, recorded when they were still a power trio, and it feels like a record deliberately crafted to draw you deep into its own strange, heavy and immersive world. Most of the tracks give off a hypnotic, heavy and disturbing experimental krautrock sound, building their music around rhythm, repetition, noise, texture and atmosphere, gradually drawing you further into the experience.

From the opening track, Wood Grain, there’s an immediate sense that you’re entering a different kind of musical space. The track establishes the mood beautifully with its heavy, repetitive character, creating a feeling that is both physical and strangely meditative. Rather than trying to grab your attention immediately, it slowly takes hold of you, and before long, you find yourself completely absorbed in its constant rhythm.

What I really like about Kevin is their sense of patience. The repetition never feels like repetition for its own sake; instead, it changes the way you listen. A rhythm, guitar texture or noise that might seem simple at first gradually becomes more significant as you spend more time with it. The music starts to feel almost physical, as though you are being pulled along by the sound.

Point is a shorter and more concentrated piece, acting almost like a momentary shift in the album’s flow. It doesn’t give you much time to settle before moving the journey onwards, and that sense of unpredictability is part of what makes the record so engaging. Then there’s Potter’s Wheel where the krautrock influence really comes to the forefront. The noise rhythms are relentless, creating a hypnotic forward motion that feels both mechanical and organic. There is something wonderfully primitive about the groove; it just keeps moving, while the layers of noise and texture gather around it.

This is one of the things Kevin does particularly well: they take repetition and turn it into something visceral. The longer the rhythm continues, the more immersed you become. You stop listening for a conventional beginning, middle and end and instead begin experiencing the music as a continuous movement.

The longest track, Murphy Is Buried, is for me the pick of the album. Dark and atmospheric, it is also perhaps the most immersive moment on the record. At almost nine minutes, the duo have plenty of time to develop the mood, and they use that space beautifully. There is a sense of darkness hanging over it, but it never feels forced as the atmosphere gradually surrounds you, drawing you deeper into the music.

Heavy, entrancing, raw, experimental and at times completely mesmerising…

This is the track I find myself returning to as there is something almost meditative in its heaviness. It doesn’t need to constantly explode or change direction; its power comes from the tension it creates and sustains so that you can simply disappear into it. Murphy Is Buried is where everything comes together, making this opus so compelling: the repetition, the weight, the darkness, the space and the feeling of controlled improvisation. It is a track that seems to alter your sense of time.

Then comes the title track, It Is What It Is, which takes the album somewhere altogether more chaotic and unpredictable. Its chaotic nature brings a unique blend of magic and musical strategy into play. On the surface, it can feel as though everything is colliding; rhythms, noise and textures pushing against each other, but underneath that apparent disorder, there is a clear sense of intention as the chaos feels carefully constructed. Kevin give you the impression that the music could fall apart at any moment, while somehow maintaining complete control. That balance between chaos and structure is one of the most fascinating aspects. The music can sound completely wild, but there is always an underlying sense of purpose. It is experimental without becoming aimless.

Yagura brings the record towards its conclusion, and by this point you have already travelled quite a distance from the opening moments of Wood Grain. It feels less like simply arriving at the final track and more like coming out of a particular state of mind. After the density, repetition and darkness of what has come before, the track provides a fitting final chapter to the journey.

What makes It Is What It Is so enjoyable is that it gradually takes hold of you through repetition, noise, atmosphere and rhythm. There is a fascinating tension between control and unpredictability, heaviness and space. Kevin manages to make experimental music feel instinctive rather than overly cerebral. You don’t necessarily need to analyse what they are doing, as you can simply let yourself be carried along by it. And that, for me, is where the album really works.

It Is What It Is makes me feel immersed. At times it is dark and unsettling, at others almost meditative. There are moments when the noise feels physical, almost tactile, while the repetition becomes completely hypnotic. Following Aftermath, this feels like a confident step forward. Their second album for Riot Season doesn’t simply offer six tracks; it creates an atmosphere that you enter and gradually become lost inside.

For me, the album is less about individual songs and more about the experience of being inside the music. It draws you into its strange, heavy world, revealing new depths with every listen and refusing to let you escape its spell. Heavy, entrancing, raw, experimental and at times completely mesmerising.

Label: Riot Season
Band Links: Instagram

Scribed by: Domenico ‘Mimmo’ Caccamo