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Killa Kela chats to ilikemusic.com

He's toured with Jurassic 5, been mentored by DJ Vadim, served time with the Scratch Perverts and Rocksteady Crew and released some fantastic singles. Now the UK's best beatboxer, Killa Kela, releases Elocution preceded by new single, Secrets (out March 20th).

I Like Music caught up with Killa Kela to find about his new material, how he impressed Pharrell with a 60-second beatbox, and how he puts together the building blocks of his music and makes such incredible sounds.

"I like music because… it keeps me out of trouble." KILLA KELA

ILM: So, your new single, "Secrets" is out on March 20th. Can you give us your own personal description of it?

Killa Kela: Musically, it's sort of a cross between maybe Dougie Fresh meets Prince meets N.E.R.D. meets The Streets kind of thing. It kind of bubbles in a real kind of 80s melodic way, I guess, which is all kind of post-Princey. On a technical level it's myself doing lead vocals and singing almost for the first time, to most people who know me, and also incorporating the beatbox; developing it into musical format, song format as opposed to live format.

ILM: Which must have been interesting for you to do?

Killa Kela: Yeah, definitely. It came amongst all the other songs on the Elocution album (which comes out at the start of June 2006) and each track was created as a concept, it was like 14 different ways to put Killa across on a record, so that was the main angle. I chose instruments that I couldn't do with the mouth, like string quartet, piano and more dirty dub sounds that were lying around in the studio at the time and incorporated them as a band set up, and, what was left was me doing the beats and sounds in some parts and doing the vocal as lead, so you could almost hear the bits I was doing compared to the instruments that I couldn't do.

That's the thing with Secrets, it was one of that tunes that kind of epitomised that theory of making the album

ILM: How did the Jazz Cafe gig go? And what's your favourite Killa Kela track to play live?

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Related links:

1. Killa Kela - Secrets
2. Buy Killa Kela Elocution CD Album
3. www.killakela.com