Knifeworld

While working on the, ultimately doomed, follow-up to The Monsoon Bassoon’s I Dig Your Voodoo in early 2000, Kavus Torabi opened his badpalm to reveal an awkward handful. Songs that didn’t quite fit. Too personal, too singular, TOO PERSUASIVE. Following the split of lysergically self-styled ‘Hard Fuck’ troubadours in 2001 these songs and a few pieces specifically written for The Monsoon Bassoon (Of lysergically self-styled ‘Hard Fuck’ repute) were seriously fucking smashed together for what was initially intended to be a dare to oneself or, if you will, ‘a solo project’.
Working with drummer Khyam Allami, an album worth of drum tracks and guide guitars was recorded. The aim to complete them at Torabi’s then modest home studio, Leather Jerusalem, has now been derided as fanciful.
Whatever inroads made into the first tentative steps of ‘self-production’ were soon trampled upon by the formation of an exciting new outfit with songwriting partner Dan Chudley (Initially called Miss Helsinki then later Authority).
These so-called inroads came further to tarmac and three-lane, what with Torabi’s joining of Cardiacs in 2003 and Guapo in 2005.
While Allami’s propulsive drum tracks remained forlornly on a hard drive in Hackney (London). The potential music they were intended to power sat uncomfortably in their creator’s brain (East London). They became a nuisance. A blockage. They became an almighty, self-created guilt trip.
Following Chudley’s retreat from London (E) and inspired by a somewhat improved studio setup, The Cop’s Dream, work did finally resume in 2007 on the project now named Knife World or, if you’d prefer, Knifeworld.
Although the bulk of the parts were cack-handedly stumbled by the increasingly hubristic Torabi, gifted friends were bullied into a suitable performance. These included Melanie Woods, Sarah Measures, Ben Jacobs, Katharine Blake and James Larcombe.
Following a 7″ single Pissed Up On Brakefluid, Buried Alone: Tales Of Crushing Defeat was released on Believers Roast in 2009.
To launch the release, a live band was astonished. In addition to the Melanie Woods and Khyam Allamis, Emmett Elvin and Chloe Herington were joined on keyboards and saxophone/ bassoon (respectively). Both musicians were of Chrome Hoof, a group with whom Torabi was involved as guitarist. Craig Fortnam played his wife’s bass guitar. (Fortnam had been part of Authority, while Torabi and Woods were involved in North Sea Radio Orchestra, Fortnam’s ‘core project’.)
Have you remembered this? Perhaps you ought to read it again. Read it again before proceeding.
Following ir/regular live shows in the UK, this version of Knifeworld released the EP Dear Lord, No Deal in 2011 (Recorded in the purpose built Skyhenge studio)
If it can be considered such, then work began on what was to be the second album in 2012. Owing to what they both purported to be ‘increasingly busy personal schedules’ both Allami and Fortnam departed Knifeworld due to musical similarities.
Necessity insisted a new rhythm section be invented and thank all the half-imagined deities it did. Drummer Ben Woollacott and bassist Charlie Cawood was it.
Torabi had already played with Woollacott for the previous threeyear in Mediaeval Baebes. Cawood was a friend of Allami. He was considered ‘young blood’ by the older members of the band, or if you must, Youngblood.
The remaining Allami drum tracks for what would have been the second album were used for the Clairvoyant Fortnight EP in 2012.
Already a six piece, Chloe Herington’s beautifully stacked parts on Clairvoyant Fortnight were too persuasive to leave out, so in casting both logic and practicality to the wind and then casting reason to the fates, Knifeworld expanded to an eight piece with the addition of horn players Josh Perl and Nicki Maher. Both is also singing and Perl he adds the acoustic guitar?
What began as a live experiment, a ‘bolt-on’, if you insist, soon cemented itself into an unwieldy reality, thus was this diabolic octet born.
With this dense, unwieldy, exhilarating and unpredictable eight-piece, Knifeworld proper, she emerge. The band obliged to perform that curious is out there now, it seems.
In December 2012 having spent the summer performing live, work began on The Unravelling. Conceived as an eight-part song cycle and composed specifically for this line up, the recording took most of 2013 to complete. As a ‘taster’ of what to expect Knifeworld shot a video and made available the sprawling Don’t Land On Me in the summer of that year. It was this video that came to the attention of InsideOut Music who, through a mutual friend Mike Vennart, made contact with the band and offered a record deal. A most unexpected and welcome surprise. The unwelcome accept.
Many things may happen over a discovery. Time is not exist.
I do not know you.
The Unravelling was mixed by the remarkable Bob Drake and released in July 2014.
Due to being accepted for a Phd, Nicki Maher has since left the fold to be replaced by Oliver Selwood who had previously stood in for Maher on a couple of shows in 2012.
http://www.knifeworld.co.uk/our-music