Friday Mixtape: This is the Kit shares a playlist full of excellent women

At the beginning of the summer this year, This is The Kit, AKA Kate Stables, released Moonshine Freeze a record that has steadily soundtracked many long walks, warm summer evenings and rainy English festivals since.

Moonshine Freeze is Kate’s fifth record but her first on Rough Trade Records, and has been noted as her finest to date. Winchester-born and Paris-based, Kate’s fans are infatuated with her caring nature that comes across in both her songwriting and collaborative style that sees friends and multiple instruments together on record.

This week Kate has very kindly pulled together a mammoth mix of some of her favourite female singers. From local collaborators to global musicians she admires, here’s Kate to tell us more…

Why have you picked these songs?

I love these songs and for a while now I’ve been wanting to get a playlist going of music by excellent women and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. They’re all women whose work and lives and I find very inspiring, each song of course and has it’s own energy and feeling/atmosphere. With playlists I usually listen to them on shuffle so you get a different ride every time.

When or where should this mixtape be listened to?

On the road/travelling possibly. Personally, I feel like I listen best to things on the road, looking out the window. But, also with friends and people who might not have across some of these artists before. It’s always nice to give people the chance to discover new music, especially if it’s music you love.

Can you tell us a bit more about your latest single?

Hotter Colder is kind of a thinking out what song about what guides us or leads us and how we get lost and who we rely on. The faith and the trust, and the getting lost, then what we imagine we see, but did we really. Making our way through shadows, hopefully up through the water, and towards some kind of light.

What posters did you have on your bedroom walls when you were younger?

Ooh good question! I feel like I can remember the posters that my big sisters had more clearly than the posters I had but I’ll try and remember… There were quite a few over the years, constantly changing. Plus, my walls were just absolutely covered in pictures and photos and posters so there’s quite a lot to choose from. I definitely remember having a few Bjork posters over the years, Bob Dylan pictures, the front cover of Highway 61 Revisted, another of Bob Dylan doing a headstand, a ew little cuttings of Bob on a trampoline too, one of him playing the bass guitar and Beck from the One Foot in the Grave record, Ben Folds Five… and then loads of photos and magazine cuttings.

Were there any records you were listening to while recording?

Well, mainly I didn’t. All day in the studio, then home late, and then sleep, and then up early and back in the studio. But having said that, it was a 30 minute walk to the studio so if I wasn’t checking over mixes from the previous day I was probably listening to Beyonce, Lemonade to be precise.

If a film about This is the Kit was to be made, what song would play on the trailer?

Maybe Big Nothing by The Roches. Not because I think we’re a big nothing, no one is that, but because I think the song is excellent and sums up so well so much stuff about the hype and anti-hype that goes along with being in a band and dabbling in the entertainment business. I’d hope the film would have a sense of humour, and The Roches have an excellent sense of humour.