07. Living Past Midnight by Kiffie

Originally published July 5th, 2024

About the Artist

Kiffie is an electro-pop artist from Norwich, UK. From his bandcamp bio, he says he draws inspiration from “recent events, lies and love, with music that crosses genres like hip-hop, folk, and classical.” 

Kiffie’s music has been featured on independent radio globally, he has collaborated with artists like Pulse Lab, emceebrownbear, and UK-based Jazz artist, Richard Davies. Kiffie has been featured on BBC Radio 6, has performed at the Norwich Arts Centre in support of Sink Ya Teeth, and has been featured in Electronic Sound where Mat Smith lauded a past release by saying it was “Brutal Yet Beautiful.”

Living Past Midnight

The LP “Living Past Midnight,” is a 10-song LP that comes in just over 40 minutes long. It was released on bandcamp on June 28th, and is expected to release everywhere else in September. Referring to “midnight” as the ultimate point of no return on the doomsday clock, it is a sharp introspect on the effects of war. “Living Past Midnight,” is dark, ominous, and dreadfully captivating.

About the Music

Instrumentally, Kiffie has given us a beautiful arrangement. It is primarily stripped down, full of ambient sound. It almost has a metallic feel to it as if he is making music with things you might find in a factory. The percussion is very stripped, particularly for electronic music, but this is necessary to convey the dark tone of the album. 

Vocally, Kiffie has layered his baritone voice and his delivery is meaningfully harsh in an attempt to fully reach the listener. When I heard his voice, I immediately referenced Paul Banks, the lead singer of the American-based band, Interpol. The layering and harsh delivery of their album, “Pioneer to the Falls,” is a quick reference guide to the atmosphere where Kiffie has brought us. 

Musically, the style is comparable to that of French electropop artist, Kavinsky. The percussion is very retro, similar to 80’s popular music. However, Kiffie is able to pull a variety of sound using ambience at the forefront, as if he’s calling out the monsters who lurk in the shadows and he’s putting them in the spotlight. There is desperation, depth, and a gripping affect that puts such an uneasy feeling in me, that I want to hug my worst enemy as to not be part of any chain reaction that might implement the apocalypse Kiffie refers to. 

What is He Trying to Say

The lyrics are a little more volatile than the instrumentation of this album. There are some places where the lyrics are stripped down, simple, and repetitive- intentionally repetitive. Then, there are other places where they are far more complex. In the overview of the record, Kiffie cites a quote by Harry Patch, one of the last surviving veterans of The Great War, now known as World War I. “Irrespective of the uniforms we wore, we were all victims.” As a surviving combat veteran myself, I know where Patch is coming from. Kiffie has done a superb job at giving insight into this perspective here. From the start, “Resilience” eerily utters the phrase “I’m never gonna give up,” over and over again as if he’s desperately trying to convince himself not to. In “Push it Back!” Kiffie directly references nuclear and chemical warfare, citing mushroom clouds, the phenomenal effect of nuclear detonation, and “breathing the air and tasting its poison,” which refers to chemical war fare, of course. The alarming lyrics put forth a reality check to the listener, letting the potential reality of all of this sink in.

The message is utterly clear. Kiffie has left left the listener with a desperate plea of protest; exhibiting an utter disgust for the turmoils of war. Mostly, I was captivated with they lyrics. If there was one record on the album where I felt a little detached to the subject-matter, it was “Pretend It Ain’t Happening.” In the lyrics, he references each of the five senses in reactionary terms to the horrors of war. In doing so, I found it to be just slightly derivative and maybe forced in an effort to apply lyrics to each of the senses. I will relent and say that can very well be a personal preference. It was the only place in the entire listen where I was distracted from the story Kiffie was trying to tell me, and the instrumentation and melody still carried the track. 

Final Thoughts

Kiffie is not the first person to write about worldly events, war, or impending apocalypse but he sure brought a spin to it, dedicating the entire album to an epic sense of dread and urgency to prevent these horrible concepts from being a reality. He has stressed and emphasized the horrors of war and, in doing so, alluded to a message of peace and brotherhood. Like in the song, “Tick of the clock,” “What does it take for you to discover, we could have peace here, if you only try?” This is the message he wants us to hear. “Living Past Midnight” is an effectively deployed, fear-induced message to humanity to do better. 

For all of our sake, I hope the message is received.