We’ve been fans of Young Knives since forever it seems, having spent time at the very same aviary and carillon in the park that made Loughborough Suicide speak to us (well, me) so vividly from the second it landed as part of their brilliant 2006 album Voices of Animals and Men. Their new single, Cause & Effect, taken from the forthcoming album Landfill, sees the band mix up their angular melodies and post-punk leanings with hip-hop, and it makes for something unexpectedly brilliant. Poetic and keenly observed, the clash works with dayglo electronic whoops and these anxious guitar lines accompanying the flow.
As lead singer and guitarist Henry Dartnall explains:
“The central idea behind the lyrics is a bit obscure: I became aware of a few problems with the concept of time that inspired the song. The main problem is that time seems to be kind of illusory. What I mean by that is that anything outside of the present moment is basically just a thought. And the present moment doesn’t seem to pass, ie. it is always the present moment. ‘Cause & Effect’ is entirely a time-based concept: You do one thing and it makes another thing happen, in time. But if time is an illusion, then what is really happening? It also implies somehow that we can control the world, like we understand how our actions now affect our future.
Musically the track is basically middle-aged white men rapping. At no point in the process have we questioned whether it’s OK for us to rap, it’s just a thing we did: We are pretty much past caring at this point, you just have to launch into these things and see what happens. I am a huge Hip Hop fan like any self-respecting middle aged white man should be so it made sense to give it a whizz. I wrote the lyrics in about 3 hours and recorded them the same day.”
It’s never boring following Young Knives, and their sharp lyrical stories, sense of humour and willful refusal to follow trodden paths comes to the fore once more, making Cause & Effect both thought-provoking and infectious—another sharp entry in Young Knives’ unique catalogue.
Check it out, here
