Kai Bosch

Praise for Kai Bosch:

"The alt-pop voyager has built a steady catalogue rooted in emotional honesty, with his first two EPs 'SLIPPING’' and 'Spider' finding acclaim online. Out now, 'Bodybag' pivots in a spartan, minimalist direction, with Kai Bosch baring his soul. The single dips into relationship trauma, exploring the long, upsetting days before a romantic partnership comes to a close."

CLASH

"'On “Tulips'... Bosch exposes a more mature, vulnerable figure. While retaining his signature bouncy and gossamer qualities, this subtle evolution to the artist's sound will kibosh any doubts about his potential to keep audiences swaying in dimly-lit venues."

THE LINE OF BEST FIT

"Armed with an artillery of sincere vocals and heartfelt lyrcisicm, alt-pop artist Kai Bosch has cruised onto the music scene to great appraisal. With a musical style that has previously been compared to the likes of James Blake, Kai's discography is a richly emotive blend of subtly undulating electric beats, soft percussive elements and, of course, his own distinctive crooning voice.”  

TMRW MAGAZINE

"I think he’s got something proper special"

MAIA BETH, BBC RADIO 1 FUTURE POP

*****

After the enthralled response to his previously unveiled singles "Tulips", "Funny" and "Bodybag" in recent months, charismatic alt-pop artist Kai Bosch has now released his eagerly-awaited new EP 'Love, Throw Me A Bone', a devastatingly beautiful collection of songs about heartbreak following the end of a tumultuous relationship with his ex-boyfriend.

Highlighted by the tender and emotive new offering "Wishbone", his new five-track collection arrives during his most ambitious guise yet. Regularly one to adopt a multitude of diverse ideas into his work, 'Love, Throw Me A Bone' looks to cement that dynamic energy he has been cultivating lately and unveil some of his more innovative efforts yet.

Speaking about the EP, he said, "Love, Throw Me a Bone is a diaristic real-time account of my breakup with my first long-term boyfriend. Like the relationship itself, it's sometimes messy, sometimes beautiful, sometimes oversharing, but always heartbreaking.

"With the exception of Funny, all the songs were written while we still shared the same bed - it's a documentation of fights, mess, hatred, yearning and every emotion in between unfolding in the present. I played these songs to him as I wrote them and now for me this EP will always be a time capsule of the version of me that existed in that chapter of my life.”

The EP's new focus track "Wishbone" adds the perfect curtain call to this new phase within his tenure. Stripping back all his usual production and flair in exchange for a simple piano-led ballad, this new effort marks one of his most emotionally-charged releases to date, and perfectly sums up the heartache that inspired these songs in the first place.

Adding about "Wishbone", he said, “Wishbone is the simplest song I have ever released. It looks at a failed relationship with honesty and self reflection but also with a sense of sympathy that we were just two people who didn't quite know how to navigate a messy and traumatic breakup.

"Despite this, for me the song at its core is about appreciating the moment of light you shared with someone even if it ended up going wrong. It's a love song for someone you can't hold anymore - and despite so much of this whole EP coming from a place of anger, yearning and heartbreak this is probably the song I still relate to most looking back on this relationship in hindsight.

“I still struggle to sing this song live, I always think of that first time I performed it and locking eyes with him in the front row - although he's no longer in the audience this song will always remind me of how much we loved each other at one point, and how special that relationship was to me - even just as a memory."

'Love, Throw Me A Bone' tracklisting

1.Bodybag

2.Tulips

3.Swans

4.Funny

5.Wishbone

Having already been extremely busy on the live circuit throughout 2023, including festival appearances at Latitude, Boardmasters and The Great Escape, and supporting both Katie Gregson MacLeod and Gretel Hanlyn on their recent UK/EU tours, Kai Bosch will embark on a four-date headline stint later this month including a sold-out show at The Social, as well as a newly announced headline show in London later in the year.

Tickets for his 2024 shows are on sale now. See the full list of live performances below.

KAI BOSCH UK HEADLINE DATES:

Apr 30 - Prince Albert, Brighton

May 1 - The Social, London – SOLD OUT

May 2 - The Castle Hotel, Manchester

May 3 - Poetry Club, Glasgow

Nov 22 - The Courtyard Theatre, Hoxton, London

Staged under the cover of darkness and imbued with a subtle yet high-stakes sense of emotional drama, the music that Kai Bosch crafts makes a lot of sense if you look not at where he's come from, but where he's been. Having uprooted himself aged 17 from the sleepy town of Polzeath, Cornwall to the throbbing nightlife of Berlin before moving to London, his music is as indebted to the pursuit of sensation as its author.

If the narrative of the small-town boy finding himself in the big city sounds like one taken from a coming-of-age film, then Kai's early years serve only to amp up the redemptive story arc even further. It's easy to forget given the positive recent leaps in queer representation in the media that, even half a decade ago, the public role models for a young gay man growing up in a "very Tory, very closed-minded" area were far more limited. "I came out when I was 14, I was the only gay kid at school and I didn't quite know how to act," he recalls. "At the time, the only film on Netflix that was gay was called 'Gay Best Friend' so you bet I became that. All of a sudden I changed my voice, bleached my hair and started wearing iridescent silver jackets and horrendous foundation. The further and further I got into that, I really did have an identity crisis that took quite a long time to pull myself out of."

During this time, however, Kai had started to discover artists such as Lana Del Rey and Lorde - people whose music embraced sadness and vulnerability, and who showed that there was a beauty to be found in life's messy grey areas. These were women who could transport you to a whole different universe, one far removed from the blinkered reality Kai was actually living in. "From then on, music really became the only thing that helped me cope and escape," he says. "I think someone like Lana probably resonated with me because I wasn't very happy at the time. I'd listen to her and get to be in my own world."

Taking this increasingly important passion, teaching himself the keyboard and starting to write in secret, it took a while for Kai to let anyone into the private musical safe space that he'd started to build. But by the time he reached his second year of college, it just became everything. He applied early to Goldsmiths, was accepted to start on a music course the following year and immediately left for Berlin.

Inspired more by the idea of articulating feeling than any particular genre, the sensory explosion of his new life quickly translated into ripe material. The duality of vulnerability and hedonism that runs through Kai's music, can all be traced to those formative Berlin months.