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interested in putting this music together. It sounded pretty weird on paper, historical songs from the whaling trade, jazz drums, rockabilly noir guitar and Salvation Army concertina with a croon- er on the top. To my surprise they were both keen! Our first rehearsal was hilarious. I’d sent out some demos of the songs and Evan turned up and said he’d made some notes on his parts for the tunes. We started to look at the first one and I wondered what his notes said, so I wandered behind the drum kit to have a look, expecting to see some rhythmic musical notation, and all it said was ‘Play the Ocean’. Perfect!”
Thus they were christened Kings Of The South Seas. With a repertoire ready from the off, they made a gorgeous, dark, rolling, improvised free-for-all with Nicholls’ almighty tones riding high above. Bits were like you might expect, although more often than not they produced something new and startlingly different. This was a branch of roots’n’rock no one could have predicted. Record- ing-wise they decamped pretty smartly to Cecil Sharp House in 2014. Err… Cecil Sharp House?
generous in supporting what we’ve done and so let us use the space to record. Some of the songs on the first record were pulled out of the library there so it seemed kind of fitting to record right underneath.”
“W
Producers seem to be a key element in what the Kings do. Just how crucial are they?
“They are central when recording, often overlooked in the days of diminishing album budgets. It’s a case of having someone else involved whose opinion you can trust on whether what you’re doing is as good as you can do, especially when you’re recording in a live kind of way. When you’re performing on a recording, you get far too worried about the nuts and bolts of your performance to have any idea. The key is to find people who you trust enough to go along with their opinion.”
Why Ben Hiller this time round? “I’ve known Ben for a long time. We’ve worked together with
lots of different things over the years, recently doing some writing and playing in the band with Nadine Shah. He’s great with sounds, loves recording outside of standard studio environments, works fast and is a good trusted pair of ears, not afraid to tell it like it is! He’s also produced some amazing records with the likes of Blur and Depeche Mode and so brings all that experience.”
What was your reference point for the new album, Franklin? In my mind the walrus is back, set against a light blue background, reminiscent of an Arctic summer sky, I swear he’s grinning. Can a walrus grin? Meanwhile Ben’s expanding on the background.
“Franklin in some ways came out of our first album. When you start looking into the history of British whaling you keep coming to the name Scoresby. They were a Yorkshire whaling family. William Scoresby Jnr. was fascinated by the Arctic and particularly the weather and magnetism. He was also an expert in navigating through icy waters as that’s where the whaling ships had to go. He was keen to search for the Northwest Passage, but the British Navy would never employ him because he wasn’t a naval officer – poli- tics! This led us off into the Northwest Passage from whaling; the two are very connected historically.”
Is it important that the listener understands or is at least aware of the story of Franklin to get the best from the album?
“Understanding some of the background probably helps with the relevance, otherwise some of the choices might seem to be strange. Alouette, for example, is thought to be a French-Canadi- an voyageur’s song. The voyageurs were employed in the fur trade to haul supplies and furs in from the outer reaches; they were famous for their paddling songs as they ferried packs up and down the rivers. Franklin employed a group of them on his overland expeditions to act as guides and extra muscle and so could well have been in a canoe as this song was sung. Turns out it’s a pretty gruesome song when translated into English, about pulling a bird to pieces! It works really well in our shows when we have a speak- er to open the evening, talking about the themes from the record.
e recorded our first album at Cecil Sharp House because John Parish, who was pro- ducing, had heard some demos we recorded there and loved the acoustics. The EFDSS have always been incredibly
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