A Bunch of Five - Kids Return

Seeing us through to the end of the year we’ve reached out to a number of our favourite artists and cultural creatives to join us in celebrating good things. A bunch of five things that make their world go around, inspire them or just need celebrating for what they are. There’s no theme here. It’s no kind of "best of year" round-up. These are just five things of the many things identified as making the world a better place to be. We’re all about positivity. Almost all of the time. We promise…

Kids Return was born in Paris in April, 2020, after an escape in Los Angeles was cut short by the pandemic. Confined together without a clear future in sight, Adrien Rozé and Clément Savoye immersed themselves in Takeshi Kitano’s filmography, and its soundtracks by Joe Hisaishi. One night, they watched Kids Return; the very next day, Adrien, a movie soundtrack fanatic, covered the theme from Kikujiro. Clément, sitting on the couch, told him: “If we had a band, it’d be called Kids Return!” Now over to Adrien and Clément...

TAKESHI KITANO MOVIES
We watched the entire filmography of this Japanese director during the lockdown. It inspired us a lot. Our name comes from his movie "Kids Return" which is about friendship. The soundtracks of his films, composed by Joe Hisaishi, are beautiful. They are very sensitive and pure, they remind us of our childhood. His melodies rocked our days. What we like in his films is the modesty of emotions mixed with beautiful images and generous music. 

ANALOG INSTRUMENTS
We love playing with vintage synths.  They are grainy, beautiful and fascinating. We play with them like we would with toys. Touching the knobs, testing things manually is very important to us. There's something physical going on. The good thing is that you can make mistakes, and from those mistakes can come magic and originality. 

COOKING PASTA
Cooking is very important to us. When you make music, you need to cook for yourself. We often go to the countryside to compose and record. When we are there, we like to make pasta recipes, drink wine together. These are important moments. We know a lot of recipes now. We don't like to order food, we have never done it. Cooking is a bit like making music. Ingredients are instruments.

ROAD TRIPS IN THE UNITED STATES
Road trip in the United States. For us it's a dream. We love to travel, to see different and inspiring landscapes.  We have seen many road trip movies. It's great because we feel familiar with this kind of landscapes and at the same time it's very exotic. We drove from Los Angeles to Denver, it was magical, the landscapes were sublime, the light was extraordinary. 

LISTENING TO VINYL RECORDS
We like to make discover albums. For our birthdays we often give each other vinyl records. Listening to an album in its entirety is better than listening to an isolated track, it allows you to better immerse yourself in the artist's universe, to better understand and feel his music. It's nice to have a vinyl collection, to look at the covers etc.

Essential Info
More info about Kids Return can be found on Bandcamp here