Name: Kiiōtō (Lou Rhodes & Rohan Heath)
Start: 2024-07-03T19:30:00+01:00
Location: 13 Turner Street, CT11 8NJ Ramsgate, United Kingdom

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Kiiōtō is the new project from Mercury-nominated, founder member of Lamb vocalist Lou Rhodes and multiplatinum songwriter Rohan Heath. We welcome the duo for a deeply special show on July 3rd!
Their debut record ‘As Dust We Rise’ channels earthy jazz with beautiful textures, dark spacious gems experimental folk with modern blues and dark pop. It’s both richly instinctive and inquisitive, infused with a transporting spirit of ongoing exploration and discovery…
Lou and Rohan share roots in Manchester’s early nineties music scene, but until a few years ago had only met only twice. “She was a bit aloof to be honest,” Rohan says of their second interaction backstage with mutual friends. Fast forward to 2021, and the tail-end of lockdown. The same mutual friends asked Rohan to collaborate on a track they were working on and he contacted Lou about writing some lyrics to it. “There was something about the way he communicated, even in emails, that interested me,” Lou says, “I was just beginning an MA in Poetry and had pretty much stepped away from music and Rohan was writing a novel, but we decided to meet for a coffee anyway.”
A relationship grew from here, and the pair became inseparable. The track in question fell by the wayside, each seemingly too engrossed in their literary projects to make time for music. But the piano in Lou’s kitchen had other ideas, drawing them back into a world they thought they’d left behind. “I just started to play,” Rohan says, “Lou would be cooking while I improvised, and then she’d start to sing melodies over what I was playing. We kept saying we shouldn’t work together but the project just wouldn’t let us go.
“Before we knew it,” he adds, “the songs began to come. The musical synergy that followed was fuelled by the fact that both of us wanted to create something that had no boundaries or restrictions, and certainly not something that was defined by the expectations of the music industry.”
As Lou adds, “It was the way Rohan played – these kinda jazz-tinged, open voicings – that drew me in. I’d spent a period of time alone, especially through lockdown, gone inwards, channelled my creativity into poetry and felt my time of making music was over. Through this time though, I’d probably immersed myself in listening to music more deeply. So when Ro started to play, the songs came out in an almost involuntary way. Kiiōtō is the music we’ve always wanted to make.”