Kat 010 'Natural Phenomena' album

Kat O1O (that’s oh-one-oh) didn’t actually find the Fender Rhodes, her instrument of choice, until relatively late in her musical life. The youngest of six, Kat Ouano grew up in what she describes as “the Filipino Partridge Family” in Wichita, KS. She began playing piano at age four, and started taking guitar lessons by the end of high school.

She was then introduced to artists like Sun Ra and John Coltrane, and finally, the Herbie Hancock of the 1970s, who, fresh off his time with the Miles Davis Quintet, was eager to introduce the Fender Rhodes into his own music. It was his 1973 masterpiece, Head Hunters – which prominently featured the instrument – that changed her life. She quickly became attached to the sound of the Rhodes.

Boston’s Berklee School of Music gave Kat the opportunity to finally play, and then own, a Rhodes. Like Hancock before her, her love of the instrument paved the way to electronic music, and exposed her to the world of analog synths, She played in a variety of jazz, funk and hip-hop groups, and in 1998, she, along with the band that would eventually morph into Crown City Rockers, moved to Oakland, CA. The Bay Area’s fertile music scene proved conducive and formative to Kat’s continued development, and soon she found herself deeply entrenched in it. She joined indie rap superstar Lyrics Born’s live band, and the East Bay Express proclaimed her the “Most Mind-Blowingest Musician” of 2005, declaring that she “…passes through walls of genre and style like they were open windows. As the official keyboard sorcerer for live-band hip-hop sensation Crown City Rockers, she floats over the rhythm section's vicious funk with Rhodes and Moog work that can float, strut, snarl, pounce, and shriek in equal measure, delivering the melody without stomping on the groove's toes.”

Album titles can, if they’re good, help give a basis and direction to the music contained, and there has perhaps never been one so fitting as Natural Phenomena, Kat’s solo debut, (available digitally 11/3 on Quannum Records). Each track name plays on a term for an actual occurrence, a seemingly otherworldly event that comes out of something wholly biological. Similarly, though the songs themselves are wet and spacey, with instruments that squelch and twist in ways that you’d never expect, they never stray too far to feel overwhelmingly abstract, too unattached to reality.

This is partially because the warm, earthy tone of the Fender Rhodes is the foundation of all the tracks. Analog and digital synths are layered on, effects are added pre-production and post-, homemade samples are stretched and looped, but there’s an organicness about it all, even if it’s hard to describe exactly what it is, or to tell exactly what’s making it.

But there’s also, even in the more experimental of pieces, a structure to the Bay Area musician’s compositions, an understanding in the beauty and importance of a hook, of a melody. “My Mirage,” which begins with a Daedelus-like opening, builds into a something that could easily fit into any forward-thinking pop song, and, while “New Moon At Perigee” has a beat Diplo might covet, it ends up feeling more relaxing than anything you might find in the Baltimore clubs. The songs’ titles inform their composition, but the associations aren’t forced. “In A Cosmic Tornado” references its name, with a keyboard line in front of the pulses and swirls, but doesn’t go overboard; it succeeds as a musical piece, regardless of name.

Recorded, written, produced, and performed nearly entirely by herself (with assistance from some of her Crown City Rockers bandmates), Natural Phenomena is a look into a world that few people are lucky enough to have, quite literally, at their fingertips. It’s that mixture of left-coast sun and trippy beats, music that doesn’t need words because it’s the instruments themselves that have the conversations, but that still, in a very real and concrete way, speaks to its listeners. It’s a rare person who can claim that ability. But then, again, not everyone is Kat O1O.

"Natural Phenomena" will be available digitally on November 3rd, 2009!!!

Kat will be on tour with the Crown City Rockers this fall. She will be heavily featured during CCR’s set and her album release will be mentioned on stage!!

Kat 010 tour dates
with Crown City Rockers

Oct 17 Sat San Francisco CA Treasure Island Music Festival

Nov 5 Thu Portland OR Someday Lounge

Nov 6 Fri Spokane WA The Blvd House of Music

Nov 7 Sat Seattle WA Columbia City Theatre

Nov 9 Mon Missoula MT The Palace

Nov 10 Tue Bozeman MT Zebra Cocktail Lounge

Nov 11 Boise ID The Reef

Nov 12 Thu Salt Lake City UT Urban Lounge

Nov 13 Fri Denver CO Larimer Lounge

Nov 14 Sat Crested Butte CO The Eldo

Nov 15 Sun Boulder CO Fox Theatre

Nov 17 Tue Flagstaff AZ Green Room

Nov 18 Wed Albuquerque NM Burt's Tiki Lounge

Nov 19 Thu Tempe AZ Club Red

Nov 20 Fri San Diego CA The Loft - UC San Diego

Nov 22 Sun Los Angeles CA We the People Festival

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Kat 010 - Natural Phenomena