UH Fest: Coby Sey, Kee Avil

Coby Sey, Kee Avil

Coby Sey is a producer, vocalist and DJ, who, after years spent buzzing around the DIY artist circuitry of South East London, has developed a distinctive presence as a performer and producer offering a shifting, disorienting vision of club music.

A long-time collaborator with Mica Levi, Tirzah, Babyfather, Klein, and Kwes, Coby's recorded work spans the realms of live instrumentation, sample-based productions and experimental music, melding recognisable motifs of hip hop, drone, jazz, grime and more into a dubbed-out anaesthesia. On stage, these dreamlike compositions are imbued with a heavy, uneasy dancefloor energy, and fleshed out by live instrumentation courtesy of regular cohorts Alpha Maid, Momoko Gill and Ben Vince.

Coby's open-door approach to sharing and making music stretches to his work with London collective CURL, who release records and host events with a collaborative, improvisatory approach. He also hosts a monthly show on NTS radio, which offers a portal into his appealingly murky musical world. Coby Sey's long awaited debut album Conduit will be released on September 9th, 2022, through AD93.

Led by Montréal producer Vicky Mettler, Kee Avil brings a contemporary electroacoustic sensibility to bear on traditions and conventions of pop, postpunk, electronic and sound-art songwriting, where touchstones range from Scott Walker and Coil to Fiona Apple, (early) PJ Harvey and (later) Juana Molina to Eartheater, Pan Daijing and Smerz - or Grouper produced by Autechre.

Honed through pre-pandemic tours in North America and Europe (sharing stages with Marc Ribot, Pere Ubu, Bill Orcutt and Fly Pan Am, among others), Kee Avil’s emerging body of work signals a vital, viscous, virtuosic new voice in experimental songcraft.
Kee Avil’s debut album Crease was released by Constellation on March 11th, 2022.