Franklin M’dear


The concept album is not dead when Kings Of The South Seas are let loose. Simon Jones finds out how it arose…


I


t was the walrus. There it was in fRoots’ latest review package, look- ing up at me; granted it was look- ing through the album title and the name of the band, but I’ve always had a soft spot for the walrus, I like them. They don’t have the popularity of, say, dolphins or blue whales, but then I’m nat- urally one for the underdog, so of all the creatures of the frozen ocean, when opin- ion is called for, I’ll always express support for the walrus.


The walrus sort of looked at me.


Ben Nicholls, meanwhile, has been answering my question as to whether he has an abiding fascination with the sea. You know Ben Nicholls, he’s from Seth Lakeman’s band and The Full English.


“I was brought up on the Sussex Coast within spitting distance of the sea and spent most of my school holidays messing around on the beach with friends. I think it


means you automatically have a strong relationship with the sea, even if it’s just from all those warnings from your parents not to swim out too far.”


“Being from a coastal town, half of your world view is always the sea; you obviously have all the towns and country- side if you go landward, but one direction is always the sea. This sea feels like it locks down the routes out of town in that direc- tion by foot or wheeled vehicle, but then you start to realise that the water stretches from here to the other side of the planet and connects everything together. The water that is lapping up on the beach was once in the Pacific, lapping on the beaches of Hawaii. It can make you start looking outwards into the world.”


Any other preoccupations?


“Only books really; I always try and find second-hand bookshops when I’m out on tour. I was reading a book called On


The Missionary Trail by Tom Hiney about some missionaries setting out into the South Pacific Islands in the 1820s onboard a whaling ship. I got pulled into this world of the cultural clashes going on with that. The pushing of the boundaries of empire, sailor culture, the cultures of the inhabi- tants of the Pacific Islands, religion, all pretty heady stuff! I wondered what had been left in musical culture from these events and so went on a period of looking into that.”


Light bulb! Ben knew just who he wanted to help him out.


“There’s a lot of stuff out there, it just takes some work to pull it into a coherent form as something that could be per- formed or recorded. Our drummer, Evan Jenkins from Neil Cowley’s band and gui- tarist Richard Warren (Spiritualised) are my two favourite musicians, both totally unique, and I asked them if they might be


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