Kindness - Still Smokin': 36 hours in the Go-Go scene

Whilst many musicians may reappropriate the musical stylings of different cultures into their music, they’ll often shy away from this and insist that they’re marrying these styles with their own unique personal vision. It’s refreshing, then, that Adam Bainbridge – AKA Kindness – is keen to embrace his influences and to actually try and explore their origins.

With That’s Alright, the highlight of this year’s excellent album ‘World, You Need A Change Of Mind’, Bainbridge made no bones of the fact that it was almost totally built from samples of Still Smokin’ by Trouble Funk, a go-go band from Washington DC who have been playing since 1978. When it came to shooting the song’s video, he went as far as going out to DC and performing this reinterpreted version with the band.

During the making of the video, he put together a short documentary about the visit and the go-go scene in general. Go-go is a performative style of music, with concerts lasting for hours, something which is hard to comprehend if you’ve only heard a track by The Junkyard Band on YouTube before. Whilst this documentary is more of a snapshot of Bainbridge’s visit rather than a deep exploration of go-go in itself, it’s still a worthwhile watch. “Still Smokin’”: 36 hours in the Go-Go scene, directed by Pauline Beaudemont and Adam Bainbridge, is streaming now on Noisey.