About

Kiss Machine

heart-on-your-sleeve alt rock for lovers and fighters.

It began as the solo project of singer-songwriter and multidisciplinary artist Sandile Mhlaba.

With a rich and dark vocal tone, contemplative lyricism, and swirling guitar loops, they carved out a space in the Brooklyn DIY scene in 2021. By late 2022, the project had fleshed out into a four-piece outfit adding the support of dynamic bass lines, bombastic drumming, and punchy lead guitar riffs that accentuated the raw, cutting quality of the lyrics. 

Kiss Machine’s live show is an unstoppable force that summons rage, love, and yearning into the room as if they were physical entities. Vocal melodies call them forth, alternating between a honey-sweet timbre and feral distortion with dexterity reminiscent of Fiona Apple. The songs themselves are genre-indifferent, drawing elements from prog rock, grunge, r&b, and baroque pop, ultimately rooted in all-out catharsis. Kiss Machine is for fans of Mannequin Pussy, Bam Bam, Moses Sumney, Willow, Haitus Kaiyote, and Paramore.

 

 

Kiss Machine’s music is deeply reflective, capturing the angst of a queer gen-Z immigrant navigating late-stage capitalism and its rigid structures in spite of their determination to honor the nuance and fluidity of the human experience. 

 

The moniker “Kiss Machine" is a commentary on the commodification of being, feeling, and connecting. while we think of love as pure—straight from the soul—the reality is that within a capitalist society every aspect of our being is in some part shaped by oppressive forces. We believe our preferences, interests, tastes, and values are individual and untainted. Ultimately, we are all cogs, whether cooperative or defective, in a machine built to reproduce exploitation. The songs touch on a deep emotionality oft suppressed in present times, where algorithms and AI run our online social landscape, in turn molding our material reality and the nature of our real-world connections. We are systematically folded into the homogenous mass or cast unto "otherness", depending on who we are and how we love. We are conditioned to reject the flesh and its time-honored truths, in favor of the machine and a so-called objectivity that ultimately serves to separate us from the earth and from each other. We are driven to hyper-individuality amidst manufactured conflict and scarcity.

 

And thus, if we wish to live, we must be rigorous in our practice of love. Intentional and carefully maintained... ironically, like the machine.
sandile of kiss machine photo shot by Mother Theresa

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