KNEECAP Vinyl & CDs

Review: Mo Chara, Moglai Bap, and DJ Provai - aka Belfast's finest, Kneecap - entered the studio with producer Toddla T in the summer of 2023 and quickly decided to scrap everything they had prepared for their upcoming album. Instead, they chose to build a pub together. Nestled in a West Belfast side street, The Rutz is a community boozer where the entire neighborhood congregates. Although the pub exists only in the band's imagination, all the action on Kneecap's exhilarating debut album, Fine Art, takes place there. Like the band itself, Fine Art is fiercely intelligent, consistently hilarious and genuinely thought-provoking, its genius lying in immersing you in a world previously unrepresented in modern music. Across the record's 12 tracks and interconnecting moments (featuring contributions from friends including DJ Annie Mac), the pub vividly comes to life, providing the perfect backdrop for the colorful characters that populate the album. From the moment the idea was born in Toddla T's studio, The Rutz was the obvious setting for the world of Kneecap. This album is a masterstroke, capturing the spirit and soul of Belfast with brilliance.