23 hours ago
6
It’s been a big year for the Geordie five-piece: they released their self-titled debut album; backed Eddie Chacon on tour; and played their own gigs across the UK – everywhere from The Jazz Café to BBC Proms. “Take a Seat on the Settee”, however, suggests that they’re veering towards a newer, stranger sound. Still rooted in their marvellous one-two punch of jazz and drum and bass, their latest single makes use of the rock chops of fellow Geordies lots of hands to turn the sound up a notch.
An arresting, horn-heavy groove announces itself within the first three seconds of the track; from there, it’s a warped, warbled dance around thrumming bass lines and a steady, complex drum beat. Perhaps most interesting, though, is the piano part: it plays through weird arch shapes, offering a harmonic layer that propels the song forward.
“I wanted to do something… shoegazy, but within that European classical world,” says bassist Stanley Woodward. Woodward composed the track, and is also one half of Knats’ core line-up; the other is drummer, and lyricist, King David Ike-Elechi. The two met at school when they were ten years old, and have been best mates ever since. Knats is the product of the musical experimentation that characterised their teenage years, and blossomed during the COVID-19 lockdown.
This track, Woodward says, takes its harmonic cues from Erik Satie; but the groove is all Knats. “I wanted to make something super simple, in terms of the groove. It’s very much a different thing [to our previous work], yeah. Everything is heavier, basically. All of the music is heavier.”
Heaviness might characterise this single – which Woodward suspects has a sound that they’ll “never get close to again” – but it’s also a feeling of a bigger, wider sonic universe that “Take a Seat on the Settee” is tapping into; as though someone took control of the amp and whacked it up to one hundred. There’s a bright vibrancy in the horns that recalls Charles Mingus’s work on The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady, which Woodward describes as an album that “changes everything” for him. The thud of the drums and the bass underneath is suggestive of noughties rock; the distant, warped vocals of shoegaze dreampop.
Taken together, it’s a thrilling listen: and vitally, it’s a new space in the scene that Knats exploded into. The band is a part of the UK’s new jazz scene, but they’re not playing the music, which is still synonymous with London. They’re playing Newcastle music: and “that’s everything,” says Woodward. “We’re such proud Geordies. And it’s really important that Newcastle gets the representation that it deserves for being a cultural hub within the UK.” How does that apply to jazz, particularly? “It would be nice if there was a scene,” he says. “We just want more bands in Newcastle coming up.”
It’s a conversation that’s getting steadily, and rightfully, louder, and Woodward wants to have it with the jazz world, too. There’s the short-term future for Knats: a new album coming very soon, a headline UK tour in April. But the long-term is something they’ve been thinking about too. “Me and King had to be self-taught, because there wasn’t an option for us… but there’s a very small percentage of people who can intuitively teach themselves music. They need to be really passionate about it. And they’re only going to be passionate about it if they’re surrounded by it. Hopefully within the next ten years, I’ll do a workshop thing there with King. That’s one of our dreams.”
For now, there’s this single: a delicious sliver of a song that paints a picture of a man sitting down in front of his mum and admitting the naughty things he got up to as a teenager. It’s a peek into the life of the artists, and a homage to the place they grew up in. Just as importantly, it’s a great listen.
English (US) · 