DMY and 0800-MOSHI-MOSHI proudly presents the first single from all cats are beautiful’s debut EP – ‘the things we made’. all cats are beautiful’s Kyle (they/them) and Elena (she/they) describe themselves as “two queer best friends making dance music but for sad people” but that only really scratches the surface of the East London duo’s candlelight post-pop.
First meeting when they both worked at an independent cinema, the pair quickly built a friendship, Elena initially providing input on Kyle’s music before becoming a co-conspirator in her own right. The duo take inspiration from several places (from Owen Pallett to Frank Ocean) but they’re careful not to weigh themselves with too much outside interference. They don’t need to; the pair have a way of combining multiple small motifs, loops and ideas to paradoxically create a sense of simplicity that’s all of their own.
“We started this record in the early weeks of lockdown and with Elena being at her parents in Spain while Kyle remained in London, it was the first time we had to write music while being in separate locations” they say. “(u know) u mean a long minute to me is the first song we wrote while being in different countries due to the pandemic, it’s a sort of stitching together of many different ways of expressing that someone means a lot to you. We recorded it with the audio permanently slowed down to give it this kind of wobbly tentative feel. The main hook comes from Kyle mishearing something in Tiger King.”
The video for ‘(u know) u mean a long minute 2 me’ was shot by Elena on a rooftop in Dalston.“We wanted to make a video that showed our friendship – with some footage of us together – but at the same time we wanted to convey a feeling of vastness and nostalgia because of being so far away from each other when we wrote the song. we thought singing to camera with part of East London behind us was a nice way to portray that”
Don’t be fooled by the humble nature of their EP’s title ‘the things we made’, or playful track names like ‘(u know) u mean a long minute 2 me’; the duo create songs that revel in hushed intimacy, strip away the complexities of relationships to look at the core emotions underneath them, and provide solace in times of isolation. For Kyle and Elena though, all cats are beautiful is above all else a vessel for their friendship and a celebration of the creativity that stems from it. ‘the things we made’ is an irresistibly warm record, and a reminder of the importance of companionship in such isolated times.