KIIŌTŌ - Black Salt

A rite of passage. That's how Kiiōtō describe "Black Salt", the second album from the English duo made up of singer-songwriter Lou Rhodes, former solo voice and co-founder of Lamb, and the multi-award-winning singer-songwriter and pianist Rohan Heath.

A couple in life as well as in music, Kiiōtō lay out across these ten new songs a bitter, melancholy critique of modern times, starting with the lead single "Butterfly", whose relentless bassline and tolling bells conjure an atmosphere that's downright unsettling. "Zero Gravity", meanwhile, inspired by Samantha Harvey's Booker Prize-winning novel "Orbital", sends the duo into orbit, quite literally, aiming to give deep meaning to elliptical motion and rendering it as a spellbinding melodic metaphor. Then there's "Little Axe", which tells of the struggle to raise children in an increasingly violent urban environment, an invective carried harmonically by a guitar with soul inflections and rhythmically by congas.

"Black Salt" is, in fact, a beautifully crafted soul-jazz singer-songwriter album, the kind you stumble upon by chance while browsing a dusty shelf in a record store that closed down more than twenty years ago.

In every song, Rhodes' voice — warm yet husky — winds its way sinuously through the mix, while Heath's piano melodically underscores everything with notes as simple as they are effective. Kiiōtō work like two craftsmen, offering us a record to be listened to deep into the night, ideally in a London club, with the lights turned down low and in the most radiant silence.

The critique of "liquid" society continues on "White Noise", which takes aim at social media and its effect on younger minds, aided by Rohan's piano, elusive as ever this time round. Then there's "Lost Map", which even recounts the DNA tests the duo underwent in an attempt to better understand their own origins. And finally "Five Eight", a mournful Wurlitzer ballad that brings to the surface all of Hearth's grief over the loss of his mother, with Rhodes' voice seeming to crack between one note and the next.

Written and recorded mostly in Kiiōtō's home studio in North London, "Black Salt" features a hefty roster of phenomenal session musicians, including guitarist Hawi Gondwe (Amy Winehouse), double bassist Andy Hamill (4 Hero, Carleen Anderson), drummer Mykey Wilson (Corrine Bailey Rae), and even a guitar solo by David Arnold.

"'Black Salt' is born out of conflict, tension and introspection. Like two planets colliding, or a new star forged from chaos and heat, brighter than the sum of those it destroyed," say Kiiōtō. In short, may God, or whoever's up there, bless those collisions that give birth to passion.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

14/06/2026