Long Read // Newcastle jazz wizards Knats on their upcoming album “A Great Day In Newcastle”
Hailing from the infamous city in the north-east of England, the trio have brought their “unequivocally Geordie” anthems straight to the forefront of a London dominated scene.
Starting off as a producer duo between drummer King David-Ike Elechi and bassist Stan Woodward in 2020, their work evolved massively once the two decided to rent a studio where they would write together.
Two years later, in rather unorthodox fashion, trumpeter Ferg Kilsby joined.
“We were watching a video of this youth jazz orchestra and then we saw this trumpet player, really young with this russian hat on, and it just sounded amazing”, King recalls, “Stan and I just spent hours scouting the internet, asking everyone that we knew, and after months of searching we finally found Ferg”.
15 years old at the time, Ferg recalls trying to make up excuses to not take up their offer, before his parents encouraged him to accept, leading to an inaugural jam. Things progressed quickly from there, with the group playing weekly gigs at local pubs and venues, before they collectively decided to move to London for their music studies.
This decision could potentially be attributed to the rising lack of opportunity for young musicians in the north-east of England, especially in jazz, where the epicentre of the movement is still situated in London.
“I was lucky”, explains Ferg, “when I was starting I had music lessons at school and there were school bands. In the last few years the state of music education and the arts in general, like youth clubs and stuff like that, has slowly been eroding away”.
Even major national music events such as the Mercury Prize being hosted in the area doesn’t seem to fill the group with hope: “It does provide more business but doesn’t actually help the grassroots music scene. On the surface it may seem like its providing more money and funding, but it’s actually not really doing anything”.
Alas the three remain determined to lead the way for aspiring musicians outside of London, with their newest album still very much containing the Geordie spirit intact, if not stronger than it was in their first record.
In fact, the recording process also saw an influence from a different type of “Geordie”, that being the infamous and fast-rising star Geordie Greep producing the album with the trio.
“I am just pinching myself” tells Ferg, “I listened to Geordie’s album religiously, and now he is just this guy we know. And I just forget it’s the same guy who made that album”.
“The knowledge is crazy! I remember when we were mixing the album I was just kind of sitting there watching as Geordie was just suggesting things that wouldn’t have occurred to me in a million years”.
King was also not shy in his praise of Greep as a major creative influence on the sound of the album: “He knows so much about the actual record making process of not just pressing record. Just watching him take the lead and suggest things has made us figure out how to conduct ourselves in the studio in a way we didn’t really know how to beforehand”.
The group had a meticulous schedule ahead of their studio sessions, getting together prior to their recording sessions to decide on final arrangements before they went any further: “we went to Geordie’s studio and recorded all the demos, with massive changes for most of the tunes”.
“It got to the point where we had these things completely solidified, we knew what was going to happen and all the sections were completely set in stone. So it was really smooth this time, we felt a lot more comfortable”.
Being a former black midi fan, King was also excited about the rock influences which came to fruition in this record, which he believes have added a different edge to the group’s sound: “It was sounding cool but having all this extra stuff, making it sound large on a recording is a whole other experience”.
“It adds so much more. And it kind of sets us up for the third one. Now we have a completely different uncharted territory to go in and see how far we can go with making a record that cannot be replicated”.
Reflecting on their last year, the group struggle to believe how far they’ve come in their musical paths, having completed their first headline tour, first gigs outside of the U.K, and become friends with some of the brightest musicians in the country: “It’s been like an introduction to the actual scene, and becoming less of a small town band and creeping into that national region, or at least trying to”.
Knats certainly push the boundaries of modern Jazz and Rock music in their newest record, an exhilarating exploration of the sound they have built together over the years, advanced even further by the creative freedom manifested in the instrumentation and the ode to their hometown which is felt strongly throughout.
Words by Jay Cohen
