The High Priest Kai Motta has just released his new album Chapter and Perverse and there is no better time like here and now to listen in to his confrontational, conflicting and provocative mesh of comedy that gets right to the G spot of what is going on in this world. Politics, consumerism, personal responsibility, pornography, war, immigration, media bullshit, racism and religion all feature heavily. How can a line like invade your labia like it was Libya (from A Little Something for the Ladies on Chapter and Perverse) not make you curious or pull you in? Nowadays taking his cue`s from Bill Hicks and Noam Chomsky, Kai has been releasing albums since 2001 and Chapter and Perverse is his latest stripped down stand-up. Following the comedy frequencies that he is tuning into far more now, The High Priest wants to touch you deep inside with this thought bomb of an album. It made me laugh and think hard. I hear some very serious issues being raised. It’s taking me out of my comfort zone and it’s engaging, defying and certainly confrontational; stamping from a very great height on taboos and pushing boundaries. That is healthy. Describing it as tongue in cheek wouldn’t even hit the spot.

The bastard son of Bob Dylan, Bill Hicks and Eminem Mojo Magazine

This man knows no fear Steve Lamacq BBC Radio

It’s the message that matters. Using comedy as a vehicle for bringing the current world order under the microscope, Chapter and Perverse is his most accessible album yet. It is challenging and very very funny, but more than anything his open, brutally honest and scathing critique of society by all means necessary spiels a sermon into the head that blows open the deceit and lies of the current state of world corporatist, political and cultural play.

I had the opportunity to chat with The High Priest Kai Motta about Chapter and Perverse, his past, the present and the future.

Kai how was your last gig?
I played this song from my first album that uses Martin Niemoller`s poem;

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the communists
and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me -
and by then there was no one left to speak out for me.

By the German anti-Nazi activist Pastor Martin Niemoller.

I read it in a Book. It was perfect for a chorus. I just went simply Here’s one for all you fascists in the crowd, obviously the fascists got the hump and they didn’t realise I was being satirical.

That poem does set the tone. Does that kind of thing happen a lot?
Constantly. All the time. I’m banned from one in two clubs that I play.

I can tell you are very uncompromising.
It’s a lot to do with language, not so much to do with the political content, its more to do with the swearing I think and the vile pornographic imagery. Personally I do think politics and pornography are perfect bedfellows. They are both, in their own way grotesque and vile as they are interesting and beautiful. The joke I’ve been doing lately is;

Have you ever noticed now when politicians are trying to be convincing about their love for the public it’s like watching a blonde skank in a porn film taking it up the arse and pretending that she loves it, you know this woman really loves it. Vote for me next year, we wont be charging for University fee’s, my name is Nick Clegg

When I was listening to Chapter and Perverse I found the way you use pornography challenging and it made me think about why that was. It’s important to me to be challenged.
I like the shock of it. I like to shock people. I’ve been playing clubs, music clubs and comedy clubs for years. I’m a big fan of this guy called Doug Stanhope, have you heard of him?

Only very recently.
I saw him the other night, he did a lot of very good political jokes, but the minute he said, you know, and then a woman stuck two cocks in her mouth the crowd went whhaaaay, and you kind of understood the level possibly of his audience. I find by having quite a few political points and chunks of porn at the same time you grab `em and then you sink something in, you grab `em and then you sink something in. Some people say it gets in the way, but I disagree, I don’t think they’d listen to someone just ranting relentlessly about politics and social issues without a bit of porn. It’s like a sweetener.

A sort of Trojan horse? I like the idea.
To be honest I’ve held back on Chapter and Perverse. There’s much more on my other albums. I wanted more comedy and more social issues on this one. I’m already halfway through writing the next one and it’s full of social issues, I don’t know how any songwriter or comedian can’t come up with new material. Every day I try to post a joke-esque statement on facebook and for a lot of the new album I just downloaded my statements from the past year from facebook and put them all through the songs. Why not use them, you know?

Yeah, why not.
And also I don’t see that many other people doing it on such an intense level.

So Kai, how did it all start for you? I know you released a solo album a good few years ago, but when did the comedy start?
The comedy came at a later stage. I began playing, well I was sort of rapping in my late teens and doing hip hop in a band that became Morcheeba. They went off to do Morcheeba. Then I was kind of sat around on my own. I was just living in a small town called Hythe in Kent, in my late teens, quite bored with going down the pub and I was a baker at the time. I walked out of that job and decided to educate myself. I got a guitar and I got into Bob Dylan. I went through my parent’s records and just studied him back to front. I was obsessed with him.

That’s a massive body of work.
I didn’t learn them all back to front, I just listened to everything, listened to every word. I had a book that had all his songs from 1964 to 1989 or something and I could get anyone to open the book anywhere and I could tell them what verse, what song, what album it was from. He is without a shadow of a doubt one of the greatest songwriters of our generation, of the last century. I learn t the guitar and read everything I could physically get my hands on from Henry Miller to Kerouac, Chomsky to Bukowski, Orwell, you know, all the things you should read basically. I started to delve into stuff that was a bit more obscure. And I just thought fuck it and one day I jumped on a train and traveled up to London to play. I moved up there and met this guy who introduced me to the Head of A & R at Warner Brothers, who introduced me to a manager. I was just a bit of a Dylan clone if I’m perfectly honest and then I started digging back into my rap history and started playing the guitar but rapping over the top.

Ok.....
That was quite new at the time. I put a band together and we suddenly got this manager, Stevo Pearce, who managed Soft Cell and various other huge bands. We went through the whole fucking nightmare music industry thing trying to get a record deal. We got reviewed by every major music media outlet. I think I was quite non-compromising and I didn’t help any situation at all because I knew just what I wanted to do. Eventually he put the album Picture This out himself on Some Bizarre in 2001 which wasn’t such a bad thing because that label has got such a credible history.

Yeah, it has; bands like The The, Soft Cell, Cabaret Voltaire, Test Department, Einstürzende Neubauten….
It’s like a good bedrock for what I do now. It got released through Pinnacle and it did really well. Stevo had other artists and you know, I just thought I’ll go on my own. I went through a series of 6 or 7 other managers, agents and stuff. Eventually I just went back to playing on my own for a while and I thought how am I going to differentiate myself from everyone else? Looking at all my influences, I saw that Lenny Bruce used to dress as a priest years ages ago. He got busted for it! And I though fuck it, I preach on stage, why not just take the piss a bit and it won’t be so harsh. So I started dressing up as a priest. I went and bought a shirt from Westminster Cathedral and I started doing it.

Is that when the idea for comedy started?
At that time I was really into Bill Hicks. While I was onstage I started talking to the crowd and it just changed the whole dynamic from going to clubs where hundreds of musicians just get on stage and say I wrote this on the train on the way here and it’s just another Dylan-esque nightmare boring song and they’re wearing jeans and a t-shirt. The minute I started doing that, which was a good 6 or 7 years ago at least, things just changed. I’d walk into a club and I’d got the crowd before I’d even stepped on the stage.

Ok, so that’s the journey to the High Priest persona and the beginnings of your comedy act you have today?
Yeah. I had kids about 5 years ago so I took a much needed break from pretty much everything. I spent a couple of years bringing up kids and I became a web designer to make a living. In the last couple of years we moved back to Kent from London as I didn’t want my kids growing up in London, which is where I grew up.

How did you find living back there?
It’s a shithole. I was up there Friday and after an hour I was ready to riot, you know? I’d just had enough. So I’ve started doing loads of gigs over the last couple of years. I’ve got reams and reams of comedy and I’ve been doing it quite heavily live. A week ago I played this bar in Hastings, it was an hour show. I did about 8 songs and loads of comedy ranging from things like;

If you’re a Christian you should be sinning everyday because Jesus died on the cross for your sins, because if I was nailed to the cross I’d want to see 6 year old’s spitting out abortions on the corner, there is a logical point of being nailed to a cross, you know? I ain’t going to get nailed to a cross because you looked at your neighbors’ wife, I want to get on the cross because of the genocide on the corner of my street, make it worth my while.

What else do you include in your act?
Things like abortion, pedophilia, terrorism, all that nice easy-listening stuff. All those comedy chestnuts. I don’t see the point of getting onstage without being fully confrontational. All my heroes are all confrontational.

And who would they be? You mentioned Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks.
People like Woody Allen, who I think is extremely confrontational in his own way. In literary circles Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski to Bill Hicks, Doug Stanhope, Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor. I think confrontation is the only way to do things. I’m not totalitarian with it, I’m not saying all other people have to do it but for me if I go and see an act, whatever the genre, it’s got to make me think. It doesn’t have to be intellectual, but I want something out of it. I don’t want it to be just another bland, seamless fucking experience or I can just turn on the TV or buy the latest best seller.

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean, especially in the climate we live in today. The mediocrity of the whole thing irritates me; it turns me off and that can always a little bit dangerous to just turn your back on life. So what I like particularly about your new album is the simple fact that it is challenging. I like the way comedy can be used as a vehicle to be able to do that. Picking up on some of your lyrics on Chapter and Perverse, in Let Me Clear My throat, the lines about (ex-Northern Ireland Minister) Peter Robinson’s wife just wanting young cock and at the doctors; Sir, you’ve got a Starbucks Coffee shop on the edge of your arsehole.... It’s very funny.
To me that whole issue to do with that woman that time, they were saying she’s going to go into therapy, blah blah blah, trying to look like that she’s responsible. She just looked around......and let’s just skip to the fucking brass tacks....

Yeah go on. Go for it.
I’m sure that all of us look at younger people and think, sometimes, I could do with some young pussy, or whatever, but she looked at that young man and from what I can remember she had an affair. Let’s just stop making out that she’s pure and that, she just wanted young cock. I’d be so much more impressed by the media if they were actually more honest instead of trying to present this fucking image that just doesn’t exist. You know I used to do a piece about when Clinton got sucked off by Monica Lewinsky and it all came up in the media. Then everyone was so shocked and outraged. And people get up in arms about priests fucking young kids and I just say you give them these mantles. You put them on a pedestal that they shouldn’t do these things,. Those that abuse are awful. What I’m saying is if you think that someone is a priest and that they believe in this fictional fucking book, that suddenly makes them a higher being, well then more fool you. You’ve given them this position in society in this whole ideological area and they are only ever going to let you down because they are human. Did you find the album funny?

Yes. A lot of the songs are funny. Close To You deals with some very topical issues with a lot of humour.
That was done for a Radio 4 pilot; I was contacted earlier on in the year by Steve Bennett from Chortle. He said we’ve got this show with Ava Vidal, Paul Singh and Scott Capurro called Minority Report and its going to be another political programme on Radio 4. The others are going to do a bit of comedy and then you end it with a song. They sent me the subjects. They were Baroness Warsi`s comments on islamophobia passing the dinner table test, Elton John being able to adopt a kid and the word nigger being removed from Huckleberry Finn. I wrote a song about that in 6 hours and the following week I was at Leicester Square Theatre where we did the show. I don’t think it’s been taken up by Radio 4 yet. But I’m not too sure if Close To You would get on the radio to be honest.

No, maybe not mainstream radio. I’m Not Impressed was another tune I laughed aloud to.....
Yeah, that goes down well everywhere.

In Let Me Clear My Throat there is some great stuff going on. You diss the Pope, the EDL, BNP, mediocrity on the high street…..
I haven’t done that live yet. It’s going to take me forever to remember all the lyrics. That actually had 73 verses when I first wrote that!

Wow.
I just thought I can’t, you know? I think it’s got 12 verses now and it was like cutting off my fingers getting it down to that. It does mean that I’ve got 60 odd verses to use somewhere else.

Yeah, sure.
I like long songs. I used to write songs that were 12 minutes long. We are so made to think nowadays that songs should be 4 minutes, 3 and a half minutes.

Well, isn’t our attention span is probably about 12 seconds these days? How did you approach recording Chapter and Perverse?
The whole album was recorded in an hour and 20 minutes. I just went into the studio, said to the guy, a mate of mine, just press record and pretty much every single song was first take apart from two. Every song was recorded in the order it’s in on the album, I opened up with There’s A New Priest In Town, which I warmed up with by doing it twice and I think Is This It I did again. Overall I like to record albums in 2 hours and it’s all live. I find the whole thing about being in a studio quite boring; Get in, get it done, get out.

I know what you mean. You can’t beat the spontaneity of a performance. Rehearse it and go in and bang it out.
A lot of my earlier albums have used samples and stuff and haven’t been solo and acoustic.

Yeah, they were quite dense and full. I did go back and pick tracks to listen to from your older stuff and what struck me is this one seems a lot more stripped down, more accessible.
I really wanted this album to be comedy. I’m finding it very hard for me to play at music venues. Generally the people running them are not so open minded about my material, you know? The confrontation. Comedy clubs are a bit better. So I wanted the album to be comedic. I think I’ve got to this point now where I’ve gone more comedy than music. I’m more of a comedian’s musician rather than a musician’s musician and music crowds are very anal, you know? Urrghh, this isn’t music, this is comedy.

Right. So you have been going through a gradual change?
I did Close To You at Leicester Square Theatre for the first time. It was in front of 50 people for the recording of the show and there was a laugh at every punchline of the song. I thought OK so does that mean these lines everyone liked?

I’ve never called a black person nigger, but I do believe racism is rife. Jedward, now there’s a reason to hate the Irish, I didn’t mind the bombs in the 80`s, but this is taking the piss

I tested it out on facebook once. People were saying;

How can you say that about the Irish? You can’t generalise a nation.

I’m like, I’m not, and it’s a joke. The joke clearly depicts that Jedward are worse than having bombs go off in your country and that’s saying how bad Boy Bands are, you know?

You aren’t a fan of celebrity?
No. The second from last song on the album, called Everybody Wants to Be Somebody, a hip hop mix, I opened with it at a little festival recently and everybody loves it because I’m slagging off celebs.

That’s got the line; I want to be a cunt like Peter Andre?
That one. I could just go onstage and say;

Everybody wants to be like somebody, but they end up like everybody

I want to be like a popstar and you’re just going to end up being like everybody else who wants to be like that popstar, `cos you’ll never be that popstar, because that popstar IS that popstar. That’s the overall message of the song. I will have to start saying that at the beginning of the song, you know? I’m going to go for every celebrity you know now. I start with

you are all beautiful people, you are all beautiful individuals, I can see you, I love you all giving it the Priest hamming it up, and I just want you to know you don’t need to have breast enlargements…..

I actually know women who have like 3 inch pussy lips and they’ve snipped them down because someone says in OK Magazine it was wrong. Do you know how hard it is to find someone who has 2 inch pussy lips? You don’t have to do those things, if you want to do those things because YOU want to do them, that’s fine, But don’t do it because a fucking magazine says so.......and then I go into the song. I don’t think people get the song yet but at least they are listening.

Tell me how do you approach your performance Kai? The comedy. Do you find people having trouble getting your material?
I put myself in a hard position and then try to be able to get out of it. Also I like to be able to see how clever the crowd is. I think there’s a lot of comedians’ out there doing comedy on a rope. I was born in Streatham. I used to live in Balham and I used to go down to Balham Open Mic Comedy and I must have watched over 100 comedians in ten weeks or something and it was pretty awful. In comedy it seemed you just have to learn the rule of three; set up, reinforce and surprise. The comedic formula. They didn’t think they had to tap into their own attitude either. That something from within that’s a bit edgy, you know when you’re doing it because it doesn’t feel quite right because it’s not a normal response.

The feeling like it’s not safe.....?
I purposefully get on stage with set lists and forget them all the time. I plan them out for weeks. If I do a song and I’m thinking, no, the next song is just not going to work, I’ll do this bit of comedy or I’ll do that bit.

You have to be responsive I guess? Be able to react on your feet......
Yeah and that’s actually something I’m really scared of. But I can find sometimes I will come off stage and I find, fuck, I’ve done an extra 40 mins and it’s been nothing about what is actually on my set list, just literally chatting to the crowd. There is so much of an area to go down; you know touching deep inside, spread the love, there is a just mountain of material there.

How about hecklers?
I don’t get heckled that much either. I’m quite surprised as I thought I’d get heckled a lot more. I do have a joke, and I don’t know how people take it, but it kind of sets the standard of the night. I come on, and say I hate those type of comedians who pick on the first person they see in a crowd, I give it a slight break, and then I pick the gnarliest looking cunt in the crowd and go right in his face, I shout

Do you know what I mean you cunt? And then I step back, and go sorry, sorry, I meant.....cock.

It’s not the funniest of jokes; it’s just back to the confrontation again. Last week I added a new part to it, I just started really shouting at the crowd, I started going;

You cunts, all of you, you fucking wankers, why the fuck are you.....Sorry just spreading the love like David Cameron, you fucking pieces of shit

I just went on and on with all this far off aggression.

That must set up a really dark tension?
Yeah, I did another joke last week. I have no problem with immigration at all; most people are very impoverished in their arguments when it comes towards being anti-immigration. I just think its a great illustration of our lack of brotherly love in the world, that we put social status type economics above our brothers and sisters who are trying to flee, or just trying to travel the world, let alone trying to get out of a country impoverished, probably by the IMF and the World Trade Organisation, or Free Trade Organisation, that kind of stuff. Or just the fact that I would like to go and live on another part of the planet. No you fucking cant. This is our country; we want it white, pure and Christian ...So I started this joke,

I’d just like to say folks, I have to get something off my chest, something’s troubling me, I’ve never been racist, BUT in the last five or six years I’ve noticed a population explosion in our country and I want to say I’m not happy about it, everywhere I go I see these people signing-on, taking our hard earned tax money, in supermarkets shopping, buying our food, you know, in our work places taking our jobs. I have to say I’m not happy about it. It gets to the point I see them in the street and I hate the way they fucking look, I hate the way they fucking sound, I hate the way they smell and I want them to get the fuck out of my country

I did this in Hasting the other night and the whole pub went silent. Men, women there that knew me, just got to meet me, and had heard that I am obviously left of centre, left of left probably, and they were like No...No.... The tension in the room was so intense. Then I said,

Oh, of course I’m talking about the BNP you understand

And everyone’s cheering and breathing out, it’s not the greatest punchline perhaps, but it just releases that tension in a second and then I went on to

if I was standing in the street holding a sign pointing to a shop or if I was working at MacDonald’s or working for £3 per hour for some agency I’d be praying immigrants would be coming into this country and taking my job.

The whole thing is just to illustrate how fucking ridiculous people’s points are about immigration but it’s just great to have that tension in the room. The room was about to pop, literally, on a violent edge, if it was full of BNP people it would have got really violent.

Have you had violence at your gigs?
I’ve had people jump on stage and try to rip out the dog collar; yeah a black woman in Finsbury Park once jumped up and tried to rip it out. I grabbed her by the throat and pinned her to the stage. Two barmen jumped over the bar on to the stage and the compere jumped up on the stage, I just turned to the crowd and said

Does anyone else want to fuck with me?

Jokingly, but it was a bit hairy, it was full of Arsenal supporters that night, I was giving it a lot of anti-Diana jokes, they obviously didn’t give a shit, but I was wondering if there were any super patriotic people in the crowd.....

Talking about immigration, which is a topic that comes up a lot on the new album, I lived in Spain for a while and I abhorred and hated the way people would want their own bit of Birmingham, Manchester, or pick a pub or a town or a city in Britain and they would want that on the south coast of Spain.
Well, my dad was round my brothers once when he was having some decorating done and spoke to someone, who was anti-immigrants and they said oh, we are moving to Spain in a few years time No irony there?

And they would be most pissed off if they couldn’t go and have fish and chips after going in the east end themed pub out on the Costa del Sol....
I think there is a very dangerous underlying racism in this country and I think it’s in a lot of countries now. A lot of people say no, no, no, but I’ve had lots of arguments with people and they say well, I’ve seen those immigrants in Asda buying food, as part of their argument. At what point do you think that is an argument for the organisation of the population? To me that’s a race issue. I put something on facebook a year or so ago about immigration, I put immigration is the greatest form of flattery and it was when Nick Griffin was on Question Time, which I actually thought was a complete shambles. I’m obviously not for the BNP, EDL or UKIP, especially those, anything that’s going to displace equality, that’s going to put equality in jeopardy, particularly from a Nazi point of view; I am wholeheartedly 100% against.

I completely agree with you on that subject.
But, if you want to live in a democracy and have freedom of speech you have to let these parties and people exist. They will bury themselves. But you have to let them exist; there is no two ways about it. And when Griffin went on Question Time, if it had just been Dimbleby and him, he would have buried himself; I mean he was ridiculously uneducated in all his arguments. The following week he was banned from going to see the Queen at that party, and I thought you can’t ban him and have all the other political parties there. Regardless of what you think of him. I mean, do you want freedom of speech? Democracy? A free country? I agree if free speech turns into incitement to riot or hatred then you have to look into that, you can’t have that. But people being able to air their views, start their parties for what they believe in, that’s part of the society we live in and where everyone seems to want society to go. I was talking to a friend about immigration and I put that thing up on facebook all about it and I had 100 replies in one day, just people fuming and foaming at the mouth, it was a nightmare and it went on for about 3 days, and the next day I put just `cos you don’t say nigger doesn’t mean you’re not racist, obviously I was provoking, but I just found it was 3 days of battling people on stuff. Again the same thing happened the other day about the riots.

The riots and the media and political responses raise the argument about our own personal responsibility. We have had and continue to have a part in the riots.
I think it illustrates how we view other human beings. If you don’t feel you are responsible you’ve lost your soul in how you view other human beings. I personally feel responsible for everything that goes on in this country because we have a government in power, I didn’t vote for them, but we do employ them. They are my and our employees and when I see something not quite happening then they are my brothers and sisters, not in some hippy way, but if I walk down the street and see someone starving I’d buy them food there would be no two ways about it. We’ve become very much products of intense propaganda to produce this very selfish awareness. Everybody is very much ME not them, whether it’s white on white, black on black, it doesn’t matter.

The obvious thing that springs to my mind is back in the days of Thatcher, when she was spreading the there is no such thing as society any more; it’s just a bunch of individuals thing.
It’s all come true now, hasn’t it?

Yeah, it seems that way, certainly in mainstream life.
I personally think we are all inherently good people.

Yes we all have that in us.
I don’t think people are inherently wicked, I just think they are extremely, easily seduced. It’s a very hard world to live in. You have to question everything all the time to understand it. For my sins I’ve worked in advertising. I had to have a lengthy debate with myself before I went into it, but then I thought, do you know what? I’m never going to truly understand it and be able to rant against it unless I actually work within it and I did it for about 6 months and it was awful. You think about the way branding, brand experience, how people now live their lives, if a particular piece of clothing has a logo on it, they think it means something and that’s just tip of the iceberg, me me me. I think bling culture is very interesting; I keep trying to write about it. I want to write a book soon and there will be a whole chapter about it. That means a healthy amount of research! The thing with bling culture is that it’s very clever; we think we have these status symbols.

Outward symbols of who we are.
And by having those things the thing that’s been thrust upon us is that we prove to people who we are, how good we are, how amazing we are.

Yeah.
Look at me, I own this car. House bling culture has gone crazy; you can’t switch the fucking telly on without seeing a programme about buying a house. The clever thing about bling culture is people get very wrapped up in it and think they’ve become someone, and while they are so seduced and involved in themselves and the whole product(s), human rights laws have been fast tracked through the courts and those are the things they should be really concerned about. That’s so elementary, but its clever how that works. One of the things I find incredibly insulting, and I don’t find much insulting, is that you can’t protest within a mile of Parliament.

No, you can’t these days.
I think that’s worth so much more than having a 52 inch TV or a six bedroom house, all that, the ability to protest if you want to protest and you cant because they have passed the rule, the law, only to get Brian Haw (anti-war demonstrator) out of place. Which didn’t really work, and sadly he is dead now. But that’s what I think about bling culture, it’s a double edged sword. You think you really are somebody but on the other side of the sword you’re human rights are being stripped away from you daily.

Does it show some form of tacit acceptance of what is going on? People buy into it on a lot of different levels. I think it strips people of a sense of spirituality as there is something very basic and solid and grounding about how we view and connect with other people.
I think the riots the other day were completely symptomatic of all those things. You saw a lot of the posts I put up on facebook, a lot of the exchanges I had with other people, one person came back to me after I’d said you’re very immature in your thoughts, and he said

Talking about maturity, I’m not the one who dresses as a priest and goes on stage and uses the word cunt just to get a response.

He’s obviously seen my act. NOT. There were a lot of people so quick to condemn. Don’t get me wrong, I thought the violence was utterly deplorable.

Yes, I did as well. But to focus solely on the violence is to fall into the trap of missing the point of why and how it happened.
I was thinking, hold on a minute, why hasn’t this been happening every week for the last ten years? What has happened in the last ten years to result in this? If you take that thought pattern into the equation you can think, ok, so I don’t think they had a political motive at all. This is starting to sound like fucking Question Time! It wasn’t political but the whole situation was political.

I think you cover a lot of the issues on the new album Chapter and Perverse. On a music level it’s not complicated to listen to. On the whole it’s stripped down. Acoustic. I like its simplicity. It grabbed me. I do wonder how people take in its message, as there is a lot you cover, a lot of content. I could see exactly how it would work better in a live situation, where you have more scope to explain, ad-lib, challenge your crowd, and engage them.
Yeah, I do. Its hard to get my stuff across recorded sometimes.

That would be my main question I think. As a document of what you’ve been writing and working with live, what’s been going on in your head and in your life and your observations it’s very good and amusing. How would you get other people to listen to the album who may not have come to one of your shows?
Yeah, well I’ve put together a show reel now that people can see. Well, the main use of it is for me is, as you say, like a document. I don’t make albums in order to sell them. I just don’t aim to and people can download them now free from my website. I’d like to get a good agent and I can approach agents with a product.

What do you have planned coming up?
I’m just trying to get one step ahead of everyone else on the level that I’m at, and also if I can get somewhere with a decent agent. I’ve done a lot of the work in putting stuff out there. Also I want to try and do three albums a year. I did do an album with comedy not that long ago, and a guy reviewed me said he liked it, but he wondered whether the comedy starts to get a bit boring? Maybe it’s the mix of music and comedy? People will listen to the music rather than the comedy; skits do wear a bit thin after a while.

What about just spoken word comedy?
Maybe I will make a purely comedy album next. I don’t know. Every album I like to be different. The new album I’m working on is going to be a mix of live playing, hip hop, comedy and acoustic music, like a whole bag of stuff. There is so much stuff; it’s just a matter of time. If only I didn’t have to sleep!

There is never enough time. I know what you mean. What else have you been working on?
I have got four novels I’ve finished. I’ve written a book of porn - It Can Be So Hard in the Morning - Twelve Stories of Porn. I have written loads, I’ve got about three books on the go now, but its just time, it comes back to time. I need to get my arse into gear, and start getting into lots of comedy clubs. I know if I go into any comedy club its going to go off with a bang the minute I get onstage. It just makes me think that I’m obviously doing something that is memorable, I just need to go out there for a year, I don’t know. I’ve obviously got people who want to see it, or don’t, what with all the clubs I’ve got banned from. All those clubs who banned me, the crowd loved it, I don’t know why they ban me.....they just don’t want someone dressed like a priest swearing. My task is to get onto Jonathon Ross by lying, through bullshit, through sheer fucking blag. I think it would be hilarious. But I’ve probably killed it now I’ve said it in an interview............

Maybe not……

Many thanks Kai.

Stay in the here and now. More so now than ever is the time to get educated. Treat yourself to a spiritual transformation. Start by getting a free download of Chapter and Perverse then get to see The High Priest live.

All High Priest Info is on the website where the new album Chapter and Perverse is available as a free download.

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