How is life treating you all? We here over in the Knock shed are very aware it's been a while, and thought it was time we updated you on all things us-related.
There have been some very exciting developments happening recently. We can't tell you too much about it just yet but will let you know details as soon as we can over the next few months...
These same developments have meant that you will have noticed gigs have been few and far between. Well ok, there haven't actually been any gigs, and this will continue for a little while longer, but rest assured we're not going to be away forever.
As a big thank you for your patience and continued support we thought we'd share a few rarities with you to download for FREE (yes you read it right - completely FREE!) which will not only document what we've been up to for the first part of this year but we think are up there with everything else we've thrown out to the digital world previously. These are:
Lift Me Up (Baz Logik Remix) - A banging donk all over the live favourite, this is by far the best version yet
Nightbus - this is a real treat for you and probably the rarest of recent Knock material. Some of you may recognise this from gigs. We tried desperately to get Mark Ronson to produce this track but he was unavailable so we just threw a load of trumpets and shit over the top anyway, which seemed to do the trick. Maybe we should try being 'superproducers'?
Little Smiles - We're all pretty proud of this one, written around Feb this year. Loads of our influences are in this epic and no, that is not the CD skipping at the end - that's how it's supposed to sound. You may have heard this one live as well.
Anyway, we hope you enjoy those tasty little treats and we will be back in touch as and when we can, but fasten your seatbelts because it's going to be brilliant. Not that listening to music normally involves a seatbelt of course. That would be health and safety gone mad.
Take care dudes, see you soon,
Jim, Sam, Toby and Baz.
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Well crikey. It’s been literally weeks, hasn’t it? It has. In excess of a month in fact, since last we blogged.
I am tempted to blame a US tour for this lack of web-based endeavour, though in truth that was less of a tour and more of a holiday that only one of us went on, but still – it meant I (Sam) was computerless for two weeks. Anyway, I’m not here to make excuses – I’m here to regale you with tales of Knock!
Here’s some stuff that has happened of recent:
We had a gig at the Purple Turtle in London’s famous Camden a week ago last Friday. First of all thank you to everyone who turned up and made it such a fun night, second of all thank you to the purple turtle themselves for making the stage so much bigger! That was a surprise – room for manoeuvre like never before in that corner of town… Really good gig and especially good to see some new faces who were clearly getting into what we were doing.
Between that and the next gig there has been work aplenty taking place on the new recordings. Ever listened to, changed, debated, changed again, re-listened to, debated some more and eventually cried over a snare drum sound whilst sat on a massive beanbag for three hours in Jim’s new shed? I have. Anyway the new songs themselves are working their way into the live set and the recordings of them are coming on really well – hopefully we’ll be able to get some demo versions up on here soon after the vocals have been recorded.
Continuing chronologically, we had a gig in Guildford on Friday last – totally out of our London/Essex comfort zone and all the better for it! We had a right old time with some of the Guildfordians down at the Boiler Room, for that was the name of the venue – and what a lovely venue it was too. We laughed, we danced, we abused Toby to excess, we drank jagerbombers (also to excess), we got told we were really good by lots of people who may have just wanted free cds and badges – all in all a fine way to spend the advent of the weekend. Didn’t feel quite so much like that getting up for rehearsal on Saturday morning, but one has to take the rough with the smooth, doesn’t one?
Looking to the immediate future, we’re headlining at Death Disco at Notting Hill Arts Club this very Wednesday, 23 April. We get a guest list for this one, so let us know if you fancy it and names will go down on a first come, first served basis – hope to see you there. http://www.nottinghillartsclub.com/wednesday.html
Following that we’re back in homely Essex for another Friday night at the Box in Chelmsford, so that’s another one for all you likely locals to shimmy your way down to and show us what you’re made of.
In other news, we’ve had some recent bits of new interest from a few record companies. Don’t want to go into it too much at this stage but conversations are ongoing and naturally you’ll all be the first to hear of any concrete news in this direction…
I think that pretty much wraps up this episode, but now I’m back in the country you can expect to see something new here before long, so look out for lots more of my wordy nonsense and for the sake of goodness come to a ruddy gig in the meantime.
Lots of love to all Knockers.
xxxxx
Gadzooks I’m tired. But am I going to let a bit of physiological process stop me bringing you all the latest news, anecdotes and lunatic hijinks from the mad old world of the Knock? Am I bollocks…
The latest news is that we had a gig last night, at the Rhythm Factory in scary old Whitechapel. Strangely enough I didn’t actually witness any street crime on this occasion. But I digress.
We had lots of pictures taken of us last night, which you’ll be able to see soon once Gerald has done his magic with them. Gerald is well good at the photos. We stood on a massive weird see-saw thing and also on some lights that came from the ground. And in an alley. There will be photos. This isn’t sounding that wacky yet is it? Trust me – it was.
We also of course played a great show! We had loads of fun, and thanks to the fact that the headliner used to be in a band with Johnny Borrell or something, there was lots of people there to have fun with us. Result all round really.
Jim climbed on the barrier at the front and did a dance for the crowd, who all clearly loved his moves; Toby repeatedly lost his mic stand down a crack. These are the things that I remember.
Oh and I fell off the stage. This was mainly galling to me because Toby stayed on his feet at all times, and I didn’t even have alcohol to use, either as an excuse for my lack of basic motor function or as pain relief for the ensuing damage I did to one of my elbows.
Still, the most important thing is we played great (even if I say so ourselves) and the crowd really seemed to get it, which was fantastic.
The other bands on the night, MELODY NELSON,FAR FROM THE DANCE and
DARLINGS OF THE SPLITSCREEN were really good, and of course Pete Doherty headlined with his usual brand of ramshackle troubadour tomfoolery.
Now I don’t speak for the whole band here, but this is a blog and as I understand it, standard practice on these things is to speak one’s brains, so I’d just like to say that I don’t really get it. First of all I’d like to point out that I think Doherty (or P Doh, as I’m wont to call him in a ‘J Lo’ style) is a really talented guy. He’s unquestionably got real charisma onstage and songwriting talent by the lots-load. But I don’t get the level of adulation he receives, because it doesn’t seem to be anything to do with the music – it’s just about him. I was chatting to one of Jim’s mates from work last night who was saying something similar – the people who were there to see him didn’t really care what he played – it was plenty that they were even in the same room as him. They literally cheered when a dodgy guitar cable made a farting sound, in the way dodgy guitar leads tend to do. Who applauds broken equipment?! Anyway maybe it’s just me, or maybe I’m missing something, or maybe I’m just not down with the kids. But just to stress again, this isn’t some anti-Pete rant by any stretch – I like him, I like his songs and I’ve really enjoyed seeing him and babyshambles play live (I’ve also thought they were rubbish at times, but that’s by the bye). I just really don’t understand mindset of the more psychotically obsessive element within his fanbase. If anyone can enlighten me, please do. I don’t know if you can comment on this blog but I assume you can..?
And after a grand total of three hours (maximum) sleep, it appears I’m rambling, so I think I better leave it there.
Just before I finish off though – I’d just like to say thank you on behalf of all of us to everyone who came down and paid far more than you normally would to see us last night – we really appreciate it. (And special thanks to Hannah and John for helping us unload the van into our sexist homestead.)
Are these getting longer? Oh well.
Love you, bye.
Sam Knock
xxxxxx
I might as well get this out the way before someone else does: I sweat when I eat curry. Don’t get me wrong - it’s not just when I eat curry by any means, but it does happen. We had a gig on Brick Lane last night and sampled some of the local fare, and I expect there will be a picture here of the state of me. Yes, I look like a dirty stinky fat old man. [photo coming soon] Ah well, the camera never lies I suppose.
The gig itself was really good – 93 Feet East is a really good venue (although they have the odd dodgy microphone lead it would seem) and the other bands were very strong – I especially liked A.Human (http://www.myspace.com/theahuman), in spite of the band’s flagrant disregard for the singer’s desire to have a chat with the crowd between songs. Anyway, if you get a chance to go and see them you won’t be disappointed.
John also learned a valuable lesson in the purchase of batteries – cheaper isn’t necessarily better. He went through 12 in about as many minutes, possibly setting some kind of world record in the process, whilst attempting to take some photos. Of me sweating.
On the way home Toby was ipod-djing some fierce old skool hip hop in the van. The quiet Essex villages of Kelvedon and Feering must have thought NWA had literally invaded their otherwise peaceful lanes. At one point I was so filled with gangsta fury and hitherto unprecedented antipathy towards the law of the land that I purposely ran a red light. Fuck tha police indeed!
Anyway that’s all in the past now; let’s look to the future man! Now it’s on to next week with the ‘shambles. Is it ok to call them the shambles? Given it might be a Pete Doherty solo headline it would be somewhat disingenuous to describe it as such… Anyway we’ve just found out we have an incredibly limited number of slightly discounted tickets available, so if you do want to come please get in touch and we’ll see what we can do. It promises to be a special night indeed.
I rambled last time so that’s it for now.
Fight the power!
X x x xx
Oh there’s just so much going on I virtually can’t keep up. It’s just one thing after another with all us lot at the minute, so I’m going to have to take it from ten days ago, when we played at Colchester Arts Centre in Colchester, England.
What a fun night, from the complementary vegetable chilli (which since last we played at the AC has been augmented with a selection of cheeses, nachos and such like as well as the traditional rice – lovely) to the headline act (Max Tundra – brilliant, just brilliant – see www.myspace.com/maxtundra and indeed beyond, into the multitudinous bars of Colchester to become suitably lubricated and not remotely capable of rehearsing the next day. The gig itself was really good, and I’m only giving them a cursory mention because you really had to be there: silver leggings, hopefully we'll get some photo's uploaded soon.
Speaking of rehearsals (as I sort of was if you go back a couple of sentences), we are currently working on getting much of the new stuff we’ve written ready for live, which given we keep playing gigs is proving somewhat troublesome, but we should get there pretty soon I reckon – expect one or two newies in there by the March/April gigs. Apologies in advance to James Collitt, who literally despises change of any kind.
Ok, onto the following gigs – Friday night was notable for a few things: first there was the absence of a sound engineer for the first few hours or so after we got there. Baz stepped up to the plate and manfully ignored the fact that he has a flipping degree in music technology and used to set gigs up most weeks for a job, allowing total novice me (Sam) to instead go round and sort out all the mics and other such bobbins. We are still waiting for our payment from the Wilmington Arms/Club Fandango for saving the ruddy day. Anyway it turned out to be another really good gig and another good night – helped by the notable attendances of one Lisa Webb, who it was lovely to see after ages; Maynard, who came and surprised us from Nottingham, and for his first ever gig (ever!) – Jake Gibbs, who for the record can not grow a beard at all. He’s twenty seven. Nothing.
And then onto Saturday night at Jimmy Flynn’s or something in Camden, which was pretty much entirely on fire at the time. Camden that is, not Jimmy Flynn’s specifically. Fortunately, so were we (on fire that is, and only figuratively speaking), and a good time was had by most at minimum. The stage was small, the operation was hectic, and the night was great. Special mention has to go to the clik clik (http://www.myspace.com/theclikclik), who were also fantastic (I say ‘also’ because we were fantastic as well. That’s the words of James who promoted the night, not me, although if one can’t indulge in a little self-aggrandisation on one’s band’s blog then I don’t know where one can…) – I thoroughly recommend them for a damn good listen. The journey home on Saturday also deserves a mention for the game of flinging tron which took place in the back of the van. Again, you really did need to be there, and by adding these asides I’m hoping to intrigue people into coming to see us. I hope it’s working. You can read a full blog of the night as written by SonyBMG A&R James - http://indieboy.vox.com/library/post/anyone-smell-incense-biggest-gig-yet.html
Back to the future, our next gig is on 28 February at the Rhythm Factory in Whitechapel, where there may be a very special guest. Which I can’t tell you any more about at the moment because the promoter told us it’s top secret, but watch this and presumably various other spaces to find out who he, she or they might be. (Clue – it’s not a she.)
And on that mysterious bombshell, I must bid you adieu, and hopefully see you soon in the future at another one of these ‘shows’ we keep doing.
Stay strong people.
xxxxx
Well, it would appear the weekly blog
idea has gone all tits up almost as soon as it came about, but let us
not despair – let us not hang our heads in shame and laugh it all off
as a terrible idea in the first place – instead, let's embrace the fact
that we've remembered to do another one at all and celebrate together
our keenness to keep you, our friends, fully aware of and involved in
what we are doing. Celebrate!!
We've been mostly playing gigs the last
couple of weeks. Well I say mostly – we've had two gigs. Still, they
were both very enjoyable experiences, as I shall explain…
Death Disco on 16 Jan was a top night –
they always have good bands there and there was a good crowd as well
who seemed to be rather partial to our songs, which is always a bonus.
It was also a debut for our sound man Spoofy's new hat, which went down
a storm. I also met a man called Dan, who came over to the group of
friends I was talking to and introduced himself completely at random,
explaining that his friends weren't here yet and he wanted someone to
talk to. He then went on to ask about my brother's band, which was odd
given he couldn't possibly know that I even have a brother, let alone
one who's in a band (www.myspace.com/thehosts
if you're interested...) and rounded off the experience with 'Sorry, I
didn't catch your name – it's Chris isn't it?' No Dan, it's not. But
it was bloody nice to meet you all the same.
The following week's outing at Nambucca
in Holloway was pretty much dominated by a coat. Not just any old coat
though – I am specifically referring to a black three-quarter length,
shiny paisley-embossed number that Toby picked up from a charity shop.
We can only assume that he was possessed by the spirit of David
Copperfield at the time as it makes him look like a magician. A
magician with fairly fine taste (in women's clothes) if you want my
opinion, but a magician none the less. Anyway, the gig passed off
without any rabbits being produced from hats, or even flowers from
sleeves, but was a lot of fun – we're looking forward to going back
there. There being Nambucca specifically, and not necessarily to an
area where nine-year-old boys walk around practically demanding ASBOs
with their shocking language and general demeanour. Seriously – a
navvie would have blushed on hearing some of the abuse this child was
shouting all about the place; I think we were of half a collective mind
to duff him one. The youth of today hey? Bastards.
On Saturday Jim was in Wales so the rest
of us met up and wrote a song which I believe has something to do with
the doldrums which we were all rather pleased with, not least given the
four part backing vocal in the chorus. And we recorded it without
jim's technical knowhow as well. I felt quite special.
And that pretty much brings us up to
date. If you are Colchester based, do come along on Friday when we'll
be at the arts centre for the first time in what must be years. I
believe we're on at about 9 or there abouts, but doors will be at half
7 and it's a mere fiver to get in. four bands in total, of which we
are the third. It's electro night – should be fun.
And I'm going to do another one of these
next week (or am I..??) to tell you how that went and all about the
next one, so I won't dwell on that now.
One final word – we're currently in
negotiations to do a video for 'Lift Me Up' – if anyone's got any ideas
for what this should actually look like, do give us a shout!
Ta, love you, bye.
xxxxx
It has been decided that we don’t talk
to people enough and that we, the Knock, need to keep you, our friends,
better informed of what the flip we are up to.
Thus, here is our first weekly blog.
Yes, that’s right – weekly. Here you will be all but drowned
with information about what, where, who and why we’ve been doing our
band related activities.
First, seeing as it’s January, I’m
going to have a quick look back at the last year in the life of the
band. A lot of it has been spent properly learning how to use
the equipment we bought after we won that money from MSN Livesessions
at the end of 2006. The fact we can now record as we go along
has fairly radically changed the way we are writing songs, some of which
are already floating around in cyberspace and more of which you should
be hearing very shortly.
Also at the start of last year we moved premises – thanks to Jim’s parents somewhat selfishly moving house we no longer had access to their garage, so we are now residing at what we shall simply refer to as ‘the farm’ – which suits our needs very well. Unless that particular need is the toilet for number twos, in which case provision is scant and this ends up happening:
Gigs wise, we carried on our involvement
with Alan McGee, playing at Death Disco and The Queen is Dead, and also
started playing more locally, so if you live in Ipswich or Chelmsford
or Colchester you now have just as much chance of seeing us as if you
live in London.
In the coming year we have plans.
Namely, to get something out – the plan is at least either a single
or EP by October/November, with an album’s worth of stuff ready to
go after that. We realised that we have got a lot of good songs
that no-one has ever heard, so this seems like a good way of tackling
that problem.
In the meantime, do keep checking back
to the blog, where we’ll be posting early demos of what we’re working
on as well as photos of people from the band (not necessarily defecating),
probably the odd video, and various other knock-related bits and bobs.
But for now we bid you adieu…
xxxxx
We've just found out that John kennedy has been playing the knock a few times on his XFM show which is great news!
If you've missed it you can always ask him to give it another spin - john.kennedy@xfm.co.uk or text 83xfm.
Ta
xxxx
Hometown: Colchester
The lineup: Sam (vocals, guitar, synths), Toby (vocals, guitar), Baz (bass), Jim (synths), John (drums).
The background: Formed as an attempt to mix David Bowie and Daft Punk and named after a song from UNKLE's debut album, The Knock share DJ Shadow and James Lavelle's commitment to experimentation and apply it to their relentlessly catchy electro-pop.
In the last year the band have won the MSN Live Sessions competition and the admiration of the industry, including Alan McGee, who has been championing the band and putting them on at his increasingly popular London club nights.
Apart from playing live whenever and wherever possible, from their mates' front rooms to Shepherd's Bush Empire, they've taken their MSN winnings to their local recording studio shop and bought one for themselves. And thanks to the wonders of technology you can hear the fruits of their labour right now.
The buzz: "The Knock will be big - what the fuck is up with the majors, they should have signed them months ago..." Alan McGee
"Bizarre electro beats and casio keyboard tones litter The Knock's songs. Like Massive Attack in playschool" - MSN
"Looking slick as fuck, these boys audaciously succeed in slicing up The Killers' canon without breaking sweat." - glasswerk.co.uk
"With energy to spare, the Knock are clearly handy boys to know if you want to get a party started. Musically, they stride from early Blur to PIL bumping heads with LCD Soundsystem on the way. A potent musical brew if you ask us. Drink up." – 7digital/indiestore.com
File next to: We Are Scientists, Klaxons, Kasabian, The Rapture
Contact details: theknock@gmail.com / Jim - 07971 461 780
New Demo below (lift me up, johnny, talk) with an old favourite (slave)
Lift Me Up / Johnny / Talk / I Wanna Be Your Slave
SEX, DRUGS AND NEW SONGS
Body: Well we've been telling everyone about it for long enough and now it's finally here- early last saturday evening the five of us emerged from the studio, bleary of eye, gaunt of face and pastey of skin (ok - obviously my skin was only as pastey as it always is and conversely baz's skin wasn't pastey at all, but i'm trying to set the scene so do bear with me...) and squinted into the sunlight with a sense of satisfaction pervading our colective conciousness.
and frankly, with good reason, because the three songs that you can now hear over there on our myspace player are the best slices of what we do that we have done since, well, ever really.
i think i speak for all the band when i say i'm rather excited about 'lift me up.' since we got some new equipment a few months ago we've been able to go about the business of writing and recording in a completey new way, and this is really the first product of it. from the first time toby played it to the rest of us as a skeletal acoustic song we couldn't wait to get to work on it - now all we have to do is work out how we're going to do it live! coming to a gig near you very soon...
'johnny' is another one that's benefitted from having recording gear which actualy works. it started life as jim playing the forst two chords over and over again until eventuallytoby relented and started to sing over them. it's now one of my favourite songs. and not just by us either. i've even had to be told to stop singing along at rehearsal because it's too loud and out of tune. well i'm sorry boys but if you will write a tune that infectious i make no guarantees vis a vis trying to contain my singingalongness. this one's already becoming a live favourite, probably just because of how brilliant it is.
last but not least is 'talk,' which is also currently going down a treat live. it's the oldest of these three and features everyone standing round a microphone shouting 'hey,' something which you would expect to be much simpler a task than it ever is in reality. simpler to record from the point of view that it was already a live song so we just had to get the parts down, but it's always difficult trying to capture that live energy - i think we've got closer this time than ever before though.
ok - enough of my waffle - go and listen to the songs!
oh, and re the sex and drugs in the subject line, in case you haven't worked it out already that was just to get you to read the blog. none of us have ever actually done any of those things.
right, off to hoxton to play oh shit i'm supposed to have left by now bye...
sam knock x x x
Recent Comments
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Jetstream Lovers said:
You guys are fucking ace! We should do a gig together at some point read more
on FREE DOWNLOADS
Loved the gig the other week at the Rhythm Factory. Had come to see what was what having got free... read more
on Oh and I fell off the stage..