Singled Out: The Gama Sennin's I Kill You

Keavin Wiggins | 03-01-2021

The new rock supergroup The Gama Sennin (feature members of Oingo Boingo, OFF!, Daft Punk, more) just released their debut single "I Kill You" and to celebrate we have asked frontman Kevin McGuire to tell us about the track. Here is the story:

"I Kill You" is one of those songs that just appeared out of the blue one day, like an entity, and off it went on its journey. I actually just found the demo on a 4-track cassette tape the other day while playing one of my new favorite covid era games, "What's in the Box?" (Depending on the week I can even do a very impressive and tearful Brad Pitt impersonation from Seven.) The tape captured three guys in a room knocking out a little bastard of rock song, dirty and quick. I think I wrote the lyrics on the spot; I don't think they changed much. Over the years it seems to have grown, I can say that about myself too.

The song was born in the old Downtown Rehearsal space in LA, on 7th & Santa Fe in 2005-ish. I think it's a Soho House now, what a waste, but hey, that's life. In those days, I was wound up, angry, and confrontational. There was a real fun, dirty rock scene in the Silverlake/Echo Park area of LA, where I lived in a roach infested 1 bedroom off Rampart and Temple. It was a few years after 9/11, so the Bush II era war machine was in full swing as was the disaster that was Hurricane Katrina. I lived in all that static and it showed in the music I was making at the time. For whatever reason, the producer I was working with at the time passed on the song, so it literally just lived on this cassette. It could have been lost. The lyrics were about my misdirected anger and how the world was devolving around me. ME, ME, ME, was my frequency. US VERSUS THEM, my world view. That took a long time for me to correct. Fast forward to August of 2016. It came time to start THE GAMA SENNIN record. I was asked to send "anything I had" to my producer, Peter Franco. So, I threw it in the pile, along with about 30 other songs, and it stuck. So not only did I have to re-visit the song, but I was gifted with the experience of re-examining a part of my life that no longer existed and include the realities I was living in 2016.

The attacks of Nov 13th, 2015 at the Bataclan in Paris had a lasting effect on me spiritually. Like 9/11 I had some friends that were directly affected by the violence. That experience forced me to look at the song from a different perspective. I placed myself as a rock fan that simply went out on a Friday night to have a great time. I used that meditation as a reminder to live and to love. What drives people to do these terrible things? How are they convincing themselves that this is a solution? What are they really destroying? This entity had evolved as I stared into its vast darkness of meditation, so I kept asking questions. As the record grew, the song shaped up to what you hear today, an innocent start to a long journey. It isn't about anger, wars, or terrorism. In the greater context of the record, it became a song about destroying your ego, killing that old version of yourself that no longer serves your life. It is literally the first step, towards evolving out of anger and finding your immortal self.

The song's journey took me to Joshua Tree, California at the Rancho de la Luna. Under the glow of a full Hunter's moon in October of 2016 tracking basics, to John Avila's house for bass tracks, and to a magic castle on the hill in Stinson Beach, California to record additional guitars with Dimitri Coats. With each step, I was further away from that angry monster I was, and closer to the person I was meant to become. I captured a youthful anger, screaming into the void and used it to put to rest the kid that I was and focus on the man that I had become.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the band here