Seedy Underbelly

At the weekend we took up residence in LA for the next 6 weeks. We are working with Nick Launay who produced the Grinderman albums and The Cribs last record, plus a whole load of other great records including Talking Heads and PIL. We are in the middle of rehearsing and reworking the 10 songs that will make up our third studio album proper. It's been a long 2 years of writing, and so many songs rejected. It's been pretty crazy how many songs we have written and how we have whittled it down to 10. But I'm hoping that it will all be worth the pain and that every song on this record will be the best we can do.
Its hot as hell in LA. It reminds me of that Bill Hicks thing about "Every day hot and sunny, what are you a fucking lizard? Back east we're evolving". But it does have a great pool.
The streets are so green in the suburban bits but you soon realize that nothing apart from the Cacti and Aloes are native. Everything else is supported by those pop up sprinklers. Acres of green lawns with no one using them, the only people you see on them are the mexicans cutting them. It literally is another world.
Henry

Hiatus

My brain is frazzled with music. We (the band) have been steadily going mad in our Oxford studio trying to make an amazing record. It is probably the most funnist thing ever but I just don't remind myself of that often enough. The hardest thing is to make it all sound easy. We have written about 25 songs and a bunch of half ideas and we are just honing and honing them until we have something we all think is suoer. It's not like before when we just wrote 14 songs, recorded them all and put nearly all of them on the album. I think its going to be worth the wait.

We are off to meet producers over the next few weeks, I will tell you who it's going to be as soon as I can but I don't want to jinx anything.

We are going to do some gigs in May to try some tunes out and generally blow the cobwebs out. It's only a few but we wanted to do some more off the radar gigs so they can be super cool and special rather than a big long run of endless dates when we haven't even got the album done yet. These dates are the only gigs we have planned so far for this year. We aren't doing any festivals (boo hoo, no muddy guitars to clean off after every weekend).

Here are the dates and info:

Thurs 6th May
Keele, University
www.seetickets.com
01782 733 700

Friday 7th May
Aldershot, The Palace
www.ticketweb.co.uk
08444 771 000

Saturday 8th May
Leicester, Music Café
www.ticketsource.co.uk/shadowpromotionsuk
0116 232 0794

Transgressive 5th Birthday bash at Heaven 24th Sept

Hello, Our record label, Transgressive records, is 5 years old and to celebrate we are playing a gig for them at Heaven in london. We are going to be playing with Ox, Eagle, Lion Man and Esser. If you want to come then you are quite welcome but you will have to pay an entrance fee of £14.

Go here to buy a ticket.

http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user/?region=gb_london&query=detail&event=329462&interface=heaven

Also if you go here:

http://www.transgressiverecords.co.uk/theyoungknives

You can vote for what songs you want us to play for you and we will play the most popular choices. Hopefully this policy will make for a good show.


Henry

Can't think of a subject...

Cardiff

Yes we smashed up Cardiff. Sailor Jerry's rum helped it on it's way.
There was a lot of fresh moves in the club afterwards. Well we thought
they were fresh, actually It was probably like one of those
educational films they showed in school "look at this man he thinks he
is dancing well but he is drunk". You get the drift. My funny story is
that I got so drunk that I sleepwalked in the hotel. I woke up outside
my room in my pants. When I eventually found the room I knocked to
wake House but he would not wake up. I thought I was going to have to
go down to reception in my pants but luckily I found an open room full
of hotel uniforms so I put on one of them and got a new key from
reception. So it was a good night. Christ. Oh and here was the start
with false tashes.

Colchester Arts centre

It's Sunday. We are in a Church

Damn!

No picture of the day for High Wycome. It was good though. I can hardly speak because I was singing through a cold but 2 days off should sort it. The song Everything falls into place did not fall into place however. I am blaming House because he was drunk and his girlfriend was there so he wasn't paying attention, definitely not my fault. sweet. x

Picture of my day

House of Lords and Ed the tour manager infront of a Brighton sunset.
Lovely way to start a tour. Tried 4 new songs last night and I have to
say they did seem to really work. *smug grin*

Hooray for nobs

Picture of the day actually from hong kong but I'm only just starting

Bloglessness

I can't do blogs on Sundays. "Yes I'm having a lovely relaxing day, we had sausages and I played Ollie's drums with some kids in the studio." But there is this tour coming up so I'm gonna do a blog EVERYDAY on the tour, whether something good happens or not. Also I' think we need a picture of the day. I wanted to put one up of my pregnant wife but she hated the idea.
Toodle pip

The Cow's lady bits...

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Chinese expedition

I'm in China, Beijing to be precise. The gigs start tomorrow so we have had today and a bit of yesterday to do the full tourist thing. Yes, we did go to the great wall, it's massive. We walked a mile or so of the wall and did an incredibly steep bit. On our way down after the reasonably frightening cable car there is a run of stalls selling what I like to call "Toot". The toot sales people are quite aggressive and you have to slalom them down a small alley. Thomas wasn't very good at saying no and was stopped by pretty much every seller. There are a couple of photos on our photobucket

Shows

Yes, we are working here as well as having a ball. The Sao Paulo show was great, I never thought we would put 300 people in a room in Brasil, but we did. Johnny Flynn is doing solo stuff in support and he was really good, he is just such a frikkin' good guitar player it makes me want to cry.

Last night was the Buenos Aires show at 2.30 am. Holy moly that is a late one. Luckily the crowd are like the Spanish crowds and only finished their tea at 1am so were just warming up nicely when we went on. The reception for us and Johnny was amazing, just a really friendly bunch of people. It was really busy and we got treated like kings. The meat here is just the nuts by the way. If you want a cheap and awesome trip then I would recommend this city. Listen to me, I'm like Bill Bryson.

Motley Cru are in the hotel, fuck yeah! I saw Vince Neal last night and we had a set to on the steps of the hotel. Suffice it to say I kicked his ass. Unfortunately they are on tonight and we are off to Chile today, I would have liked to have seen that.

Henry

Funny story

Just remembered. We did a session for some Brazilian tv thing yesterday and they brought a double bass for House of Lords. I did a bit of wee at the look on his face and his subsequent efforts to play it.
Henry

South America

I managed 4 films on the flight: Hancock, Hallam Foe, Kung fu Panda and Indiana Jones 4. Classics all of them. Actually I just couldn't focus on Indi by the end. Despite my impressive figure Oliver actually busted 5 films which i think takes some beating.

We are in Sau Paulo, its big and fun. I like Cachassa a lot, it makes me all warm. House and I did some sight seeing this morningm, we visited a cemetary with the most amazing mausoleums. It is spring here and the water goes down the plug hole the other way. Skill. There are a lot of junk shops and second hand shops in this city so we have been trying to spend money on rubbish and not succeeding. There is still time.

We went to a restaurant today where they have a small disc at each table that is divided into two colours; red and green. When green is facing up the waiters bring meat, when you feel like you are going to die from meat you have to turn the card over to red. Red means "Please, no more meat, I can't eat any more of your damn meat!" Salad is also available.

We also did another acoustic session today, but it was good fun and got our voices warmed up for tomorrow. House has a sore throat from 13 hours of airoplane air con.

We are supposed to be going to Iceland next week but apparently the whole country has become poor in the last 24 hours. This may jeopordise the trip. I hope not for purely selfish reasons.

Here are some sexy photos.

OK so I got distracted...

And didn't post anything new here. But I make amends today. It's quiet for us at the moment, we are just beavering away on new material and planning the new world order, which looks pretty funny so far. The songs are coming slowly but surely and we have a lot of frikking crazy ideas to choose from. It's the prog third album where we all grow our hair long and do a shit load of acid. The studio is getting very warm and manly and the coffee intake has gone sky high, so much so that my joints are drying up, the joints in my wrists, not my doobie joints, they are fine.

We came up with a title for album 3 "Royal Daylight", but we may find that giving an album a name before it is written is a massive mistake. Any way, we are rejecting all songs that sound like just another Young Knives song, and trying to make something jolly and scary and odd. Let's see if you can tell the difference when, and of course "if" it comes out.

Off to South America next Saturday, which will be fun. I'll make sure there are photos, sexy comments and a phat blog of antics for you to read.

I love you

Henry x

Brooklyn

Yes, we are in NY doing some super shows. I am not normally a big fan of this city as the people are rude bu we are staying in Brooklyn and the people are so much more relaxed. I did brunch today with some NY ladies, it was fully sex in the city but there were some english girls there too so it was really crude. I love it when english people shout with laughter in public places about nobs and arseholes, it's the best. Having said that the Yanks are pretty much as rude when you get them going.
We played the official MIA after party last night at Studio B. It was actually pretty good, people seemed really open to us. Tonight is Union Hall which is a small but cool venue. Although I mean cool as in trendy. It's 35 degrees here, I am a fatty, it doesn't mix well. We are going to do the gig in shorts tonight, but still keep it civilised. Maybe we'll go for full gym whites.
see ya.
Henry

Brighton Great Escape

Alright loves,

Been a while. I bust my laptop, honest. Thought I would just let you know about the show we did last night at the great escape. It was pretty special. I don't think I have seen a crowd go so completely bananas for a while and we fed hungrily on it. You can never put your finger on what makes a special show and I am sure there is a lot of luck involved but our lines converged last night. So that was nice.

In other news and stuff we are playing with our heroes Sparks on Saturday. I can't wait. How in God's name they are managing to play all 21 albums in as many nights I will never know. It is certainly a feat. We will be there for the album "A woofer in tweeters clothing", isn't that an amazing album title, I wish I had thought of that. Me and Tom hope that we are still writing together when we are 60 odd. I imagine we will be as we will not be able to think of anything better to do.


Did a nice session with Mark Riley last week, he's one of the only truly music fans in the dj business in my mind. Maybe thats just because he likes music that I like.

This is sounding a bit like a news update, sorry, but Turn tail single is out on Monday 19th. I am excited. I think it's one of the best songs we have ever released as a single.

Saw Ungdomskulen last night, that was a real treat.

see you
Henry

Italia

Hello Dudes and dudettes,

Italy is not proving to be the most reliable place for working internet so I am reduced to sitting on some steps in Bologna and bumming a connection of some office or other. It is however, one smashing place to be doing gigs. The days are long and warm, the Wisteria is in full bloom and stinks of summer and the band and it's associated employ are in high and gushing spirits. Oooh, it gets me all poetic you see. I spent some time sitting in an ancient hillside garden yesterday, Mr Lizard was basking on the worn red bricks and I drank 4000 bottles of Peroni. The gig was in a scout hut and there was at least 80 people in there, but it was really quite good fun. The adience did this thing where they looked really excited but didn't say very much at all. When we left the stage they fell silent very quickly after a short burst of rapturous applause. I looked at them and they at me, they just looked and smiled. Then I realised that they did really want an encore, they just didn't quite know how to say it. One guy just walked over to me and said "look, they want more, you must play more". Tom had already gone back to the dressing room so Jimmy went of to get him. I think we should call Norris and see if we have an official entry for the Guiness book of records for the longest gap between the main show and the Encore. I think Norris would only alow it with an invigilator present but we can dream.

We also made up a new game last night:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1NaHNFTX0I

"The most dangerous thing in the world is bored people."
Henry Dartnall (his blog, 24th April 2008).

I am going to make some more proper video soon too. I never have the camera on me when good stuff happens.

European tour 2

It's pretty good touring Europe. They feed you like a king and give you showers and apartments and all sorts. On Friday we played Zürich. Zürich is a quiet town but at night people seem to go Bananas. The club after the gig stayed open until 5, and a lot of people (including me) made it to the end. I slept in for a while the next day, but when I woke up and pulled back the curtain of my bunk I got the best view of the tour so far. We were parked in an Alpine foot hill about a mile out of the Austrian town of Dornbirn. There was an amazing river rushing through the pine trees and we were soaked in dappled sunlight. Then i looked up and saw the snow capped mountains. I can honestly say that i liked it more than waking up in a disused building plot in Crewe. Not to dis Crewe too much but a view like the one I had on Saturday takes some beating.

I didn't really get how you can have a gig that far from town, but the people came. The hilight of the night was our own beer tap and the support band nicking an entirely full barrel of beer. The venue guy didn't even seem to care. Cool.

We were supposed to be driving to Rome the next day (day off) and then playing in Rome today, but the water pipes burst in the Rome venue (that's exactly how the Italians roll, nothing ever works). So we blagged our way into a gig in Innsbruck (which is where I am now). It looks like a really cool little club and they gave us an apartment for 2 days. sweet.

We have done some extreme tourism yesterday and today, including Alp climbing in trainers a cable car, a couple of museums and a Zoo. Pics and vid to follow.

Byesy bye
Henry