Stal Kingsley at The Cavendish Arms

If you happened to be lurking around some of the less lit streets of Stockwell last fiendish Friday you may well have come across the enigmatic workings of the one man band that is Stal Kingsley. Still stuck in the media age of cassette players and VHSs, one wonders whether this strange kid is trying to be indie for the sake of it or genuinely believes technological advances should have stopped in the '90s. Either way it goes without saying that watching one man in a boiler suit thrusting around stage with his jangly guitar playing along side a recording of himself from a cassette is truly unmissable.

Unsurprisingly, Stal Kinglsey's sound is just as weird and wonderful as his performance proposes. Playing for what must have been a mere 30 minutes the small but enthused audience were met with an upbeat set list of tunes that sounded as if Mac Demarco had shacked up with Fat White Family (probably against their will) in the home of Ben Howard. Unbelievable, I know, but despite this apparent confusion of genre Stal Kingsley embodies a dystopian lo-fi psychedelia that you didn't know existed but carries some sort of groovy nostalgia that you've been missing. This is perfectly accompanied by a relatable reflection of life as a post-modern millennial, expressed through his lyricism: consisting of what it's like to be a useless boy, the influxes of nihilism that comes with life, and finally the desirability of love and it's eventual destruction of all you know. All of this is then ended with a loud twenty second countdown and a miraculously finished illustration.

Overall, whilst Stal Kingsley, and his one man show, may present him as an archetypal art graduate who is grasping at hipster straws to be an individual, he's actually a satirical come lyrical genius. He puts to the test how musical performance should be presented to you and more specifically what medium it's presented in. Should it be through a charmingly charismatic curly haired wanderer in a dirty boiler suit only playing a guitar, through a grainy almost inaudible cassette tape or through an cleverly comic farce played via VHS? I guess you'd have to find that out for yourself...




If you think this is enough to get your weird rocks off check out Stal Kingsley here:
Stal Kingsley / Bandcamp 
Stal Kingsley / Facebook
Stal Kingsley / Twitter