Knife Club

Adam Pytro posted 24th April 2020
Featured and Interviews

It was recently revealed that Knife Club ‘the most mysterious band in DIY punk’ featured Andy Davies (TNSrecords, Manchester Punk Festival and formerly of Revenge Of The Psychotronic Man) alongside members of Casual Nausea, Nosebleed, Haest, Matilda’s Scoundrels and Faintest Idea. Knife Club formed after a drunken night in Hastings and have since been building up interest in their own secretive fashion, the band have simultaneously been negotiating the logistical nightmare of travelling hundreds of miles for band practice, a bitter North/South divide and justifying why they were together in random places at random times. Knife Club are set to release their debut album “We Are Knife Club” on the 1st May, by now the band should have played their first six gigs, including a trip to Denmark, but the coronavirus lockdown happened, so you’ll have to wait a bit longer to see the band live.

We spoke to Andy Davies about Knife Club , TNSrecords, Manchester Punk Festival, Revenge Of The Psychotronic Man, coronavirus and DIY Punk Rock just ahead of Manchester Punk Festival‘s ‘Lockdown Live” weekend

It looks like you’re pretty busy at the moment – What’ve you got on the go?

Yeah, everything is still pretty hectic. I’m working from home for my real job, which has given me some extra time. But, yet again I’m left wondering how all the music stuff fits in normally.

We’ve got the Manchester Punk Festival online weekend this weekend (not sure when this will be out). It’s clearly not as good as actually having Manchester Punk Festival, but we’ve got some great acts playing live through our instagram. Some are acoustic and one or two actually live together so can do something closer to their real set.

There will also be a few extra bits, such as Skarobics, a quiz and an exclusive stream of the debut Knife Club album (shameless plug). we’ll try to keep people entertained.

The ‘mystery’ surrounding Knife Club really created a buzz. How did the band come about?

The first I heard of it was at Wotsit Called Fest 2018. My old band (Revenge Of The Psychotronic Man) were on our final run of gigs. Nosebleed, Haest, Matilda’s Scoundrels, Casual Nausea and Faintest Idea (all on TNSrecords and the bands the other Knife Club members come from) were all playing.

Dan and Eliott excitedly came up to me and said they had a new band, which was a bit of a supergroup and it involved getting shit tattoos and did I fancy it. I told them to ask me again in a few months after I’d had a bit of time out, as I was pretty burnt out at that point. At Manchester Punk Festival last year they asked me again. I knew it could only be a lot of fun, so I said yes. I’ve got the tattoo and it has been lovely making music with some lovely people. With members living in Ipswich (Zoë), Hastings (Dan), Kings Lynn (Dani), Leeds (Eliott) and Manchester (myself and Big Hands) it was never gonna be easy to even practise. In fact we only managed one practise with the full band present before recording the album. But it has been great fun and hopefully when all this calms down we will actually play some gigs.

Myself and Bev (TNS) had always talked about interesting ways to promote a new band that would get people to pay attention. Because this band featured people from bands we already worked with and it was never a band that would be able to gig every weekend, we felt it was ideal to try something a bit different. Hence the whole #whoareknifeclub? thing. It was a bit of fun and it certainly got people talking. It has been interesting to see the reaction to it.

* Having to cancel Manchester Punk Festival must’ve been devastating – especially after all the work you put in – How are you responding?

It was devastating, but obviously some things are bigger than music. We actually cancelled slightly before we were told we had to. We’d reached a tipping point from being desperate to save the event at all costs, to realising it wasn’t safe or fair to run the event. As soon as we realised that peoples health was at risk we knew we needed to cancel. It’s very sad, but the right thing to happen when looking at the bigger picture.

It was emotionally draining, but I made my peace with it as soon as I knew it was the right thing to happen. I think things like the online weekend will be a nice way for everyone invested in the event to stay connected. I hope people enjoy that. It’s not the real thing, but the best we can do right now.

It’s good to see TNS is still releasing (LOVED the Incisions/Pizzatramp split). What’re you excited about over there?

We decided there was no way of predicting when gigs can happen again. Obviously the bands releasing music would prefer to tour these releases. However, lots of it had already gone to press. New music is certainly helping me through the lockdown, so hopefully still releasing everything we had planned is the right thing to do. We have a Post Office Drop and Go card, so we can easily keep sending orders safely.

April is always our biggest month as bands try to release in time for MPF. So it’s massively appreciated that people have kept ordering and obviously we’d urge people to continue doing so as it really helps us cover our costs.

I’m very excited about everything we have out atm.

We have the Knife Club album out on 1st May. We’ve done the Incisions/Pizzatramp 7″ and albums for Follow Your Dreams, Brassick, Christmas and Jodie Faster in the past few months. We have two albums that will go on pre-order soon that have not been announced yet, so look out for them. This really was set to be a massive year for us. But hopefully people will enjoy the music, even though they can’t see it live. And hopefully the DIY scene in general will come back even stronger.