We grew up and went to school together in and around a
small town called 'Battle' in the south of England. There is not much
to do in Battle, but in the late 1980s, during school holidays spent
playing football, we discovered music, like most kids do, and pretty
soon were swapping our favourite new albums and artists.
Tim had a few piano lessons at school, but quickly bored of the endless
scales and classical music, so gave up trying, only to discover that
he could play Buddy Holly tunes with what he had picked up. That was
it, the start of years playing the songs he enjoyed listening to on
a Casio keyboard, programming a pocket-sized sequencer, and trying to
write his own songs to play to his friends.
As soon as Rich started out on the drums we started playing together,
recruiting a guitarist; Dominic Scott, and soon after, a singer; Tom.
Music was the only thing we all wanted to do. We had nobody to teach
us aside from the tapes in our walkmans, and our Beatles' songbooks,
so it took a while to get the hang of playing and writing. By 1999,
we moved to London to seek a record deal and conquer the world.
Two years on, without a record deal, and with one less member, the three
of us fled back to the countryside, broke and downhearted, suffering
the ill-effects of two years spent in dead-end jobs by day, and dank
rehearsal rooms by night. Salvation arrived, as ever, in the form of
music; an opportunity to go to a dilapidated farmhouse in France and
record some new demos. The guitar lines were forgotten, and a new sound
gradually emerged. Pianos and keyboards took over and Tom's voice found
the space it needed. We headed back home, eager to play our new songs
to people.
By January 2003 we'd been given the chance to release
a record on legendary indie label, Fierce Panda, whose head honcho had
seen us play at the 12 Bar Club in London. We went back to Battle and
recorded 'Everybody's Changing'. The song was made 'Single of the Week'
by Radio 1 DJ Steve Lamacq, and gradually picked up by others. All 500
copies sold, and we could barely believe it. We toured the UK for the
first time, playing to packed houses and empty rooms. We paid for the
fuel and food with what we had earned the night before, the money safely
stored in a plastic food container.
The lure of a real band that was getting played on the
radio and touring the UK was too much to resist, and pretty much all
of the big labels had got their chequebooks out. We signed a deal that
offered us total creative control over our music, and went to a small
local studio called Helioscentric to record and co-produce (with Andy
Green) our debut album 'Hopes and Fears' in late 2003, and headed back
out on the road.
We released 'Hopes and Fears' in May 2004. The continuing
tour we embarked upon led us around the world for another eighteen months.
In 2004 we played four UK tours, and by October 2005 had played five
American tours which included playing alongside U2 at Madison Square
Gardens, visited Mexico, Japan, Australia, toured Europe, played festivals
all over the world, and played at the London 'Live 8' show.
'Hopes and Fears' sold over 5 million copies worldwide.
We won two Brit Awards in 2005 (British Breakthrough Act and Best Album);
Q Magazine's Best Album award; and were nominated in the Best New Act
category at The Grammys, but the touring was taking its toll - we needed
to get back into the studio, and back to our homes. During every break
we could find since 2004, we had been recording bits and pieces, and
in October 2005 we headed straight back into the studio for the new
sessions with Andy Green, finishing off in December.
The new album, 'Under The Iron Sea' was recorded at The
Magic Shop in Soho, New York, and back at Helioscentric Studios, near
Battle. In making this record we tried to confront all our worst fears,
to ruthlessly scrutinise ourselves, our relationship with each other,
with other people, and with the world at large, and to make a journey
into the darkest places we could find.
It made for an incredibly intense atmosphere during the
writing and recording of the album, and the resultant songs and sounds
very much reflect that. In the songs we created a kind of sinister fairytale-world-gone-wrong,
a feeling of confusion and numbness represented by a dark place under
an impenetrable iron sea. To express all this we created entirely new
sounds by putting an old electric piano and various analogue synths
through many different combinations of vintage guitar effects pedals,
creating soundscapes that range from the percussive to vast oppressive
walls of distortion.
We were writing, singing and performing with a drive,
intensity and fury that is almost unrecognisable from our previous music.
It was important that this album had a strong visual presence too, and
the start of that was the collaboration with Irvine Welsh on 'Atlantic'
offered somebody who both inspired us, and found his own inspiration
in our music. His resulting film echoes the importance of that visual
identity we strove for.
We wrote 'Under The Iron Sea' because we needed a record
that was going to make us feel alive again.
'Under The Iron Sea' is out now.
