Visionary drummer, producer and rapper Kassa Overall unveils his new album ANIMALS which is out now on Warp Records. Following news of a show at Ronnie Scott’s in London and an appearance at We Out Here festival, Kassa announces a show in Bristol and other EU dates. Kassa’s U.S. headline tour kicks off June 06 in Chicago, and will also include plays in Brooklyn, Detroit, Toronto, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, DC, and Montreal.

Upfront of the album, Kassa has released singles “Ready To Ball,” “Make My Way Back Home,” “The Lava Is Calm” and “Going Up,” with the songs garnering support from The New York Times, Stereogum, Pitchfork, Paste, Brooklyn Vegan, American Songwriter and more. He also delivered an NPR Tiny Desk performance described by the institution as a “virtuosic display of musicianship, lyricism and artistic innovation”—Watch here.

ANIMALS follows Kassa’s two self-released, critically acclaimed albums, and features an all-star array of guests from Kassa’s community including Ishmael Butler of Shabazz Palaces, Francis and the Lights, Lil B, Wiki, Danny Brown, Laura Mvula, Vijay Iyer, and Tomoki Sanders. The album was largely incubated in his hometown Seattle, where Kassa took respite to build out his solo work after many years of living and working within New York City’s jazz and music circuit as an in-demand drummer and producer.

ANIMALS pushes Kassa’s subversive message further too, the title a loaded metaphor for the paradoxes of his life as an entertainer and as a black man in America. Kassa explains: “We call ourselves humans, right? But we kind of do animalistic shit towards each other. We justify immorality by almost stripping people of their humanity. He's an animal, so we can treat him as such.  All these different kinds of little questions in these songs point to questions about humanity: am I free? Or am I a circus animal? These questions intersect with the way I think about race.”

Prior to signing with Warp, Kassa released two studio albums, Go Get Ice Cream and Listen to Jazz (2019) and I Think I’m Good (2020). The two projects fused his various influences and musical lives into one groundbreaking sound that layered the virtuosic drumming, polyrhythmic rapping, and meticulous production techniques that he had been honing separately. His own voice began to crystallise too, as he learned to channel his revolutionary, poetic wisdom into critiques of the carceral system and anti-black racism, while speaking on his own struggles with mental illness.