Unless you’re a Winehouse type who can generate publicity merely by popping to the shops for a moist towelette, it can be hard to keep your album in the news.
The tried and tested single-album-single-single-single release schedule can get a little tiresome by the time you’re onto single number three, and as the money for videos gets tight it takes a bit of clever thinking to make a splash when all the fans have the album already.
Mercury-nominated three-piece Young Knives have addressed this issue in novel fashion. Rather than just toss out another single from last year’s sophomore album ‘Superabundance’, they’ve decided to go back to basics. Their latest single ‘Turn Tail’ has been recorded live in the studio, straight onto vinyl, with no messing around in between. It’s how Elvis Presley recorded his early stuff, and hasn’t been tried commercially since the 1970s, according to Knives’ Henry Dartnell.
“We were talking to Tim and Toby from [record label] Transgressive and they were a bit sick of releasing vinyl just to try to increase single sales,” says Dartnell. Hence on a Tuesday in April they trekked down to the studio with a couple of engineers, a couple of instruments, and no margin for error.
“We just did this stripped down version of a couple of songs off the album, just two mics and the sound of the lathe hissing in the background. It was good fun but slightly nerve wracking, because every time you fucked up it was forty quid.”
The whole event was also filmed for an online documentary, which you can access here at ClashMusic when we get our mitts on it.
