Ever-creative Oxford tri make a welcome return

ATTENTION focuses this coming week on the announcement of the Barclaycard Mercury Music Prize winner. And with Oxford’s own Foals in with a chance at the UK’s most respected music awards, along with Arctic Monkeys and David Bowie, it could be a fascinating result.

The big news in Oxford, however, is the return of probably the city’s most entertaining band — The Young Knives. Relatively quiet since their last album, 2011’s Ornaments from the Silver Arcade, brothers Henry and Tom Dartnell and bandmate Oliver Askew have relaunched themselves with their most inventive body of work to date. Called Sick Octave (named after a synthesiser the lads had made), it is a striking album which leads the listener through juicy pop, discordant indie-rock, folk, electronic and samples aplenty.

The album was recorded at Henry’s home studio in Kirtlington, with sounds harvested from YouTube, ipad apps, old computer games and by bashing and dropping bits of metal in the cavernous hangars of the former USAF base at Upper Heyford. The guys celebrate their return — and the imminent release of the album — with an intimate set at The Cellar, at which they will play the album in its entirety, as well as a clutch of their old favourites.

The sweaty subterranean venue may seem an odd choice for a band who made a name for themselves with a string of chart singles and even a Mercury nomination, but there is method in the madness.

“We didn’t want this to be just another gig,” Henry told us. “We wanted it to be a special event — to be intimate and fun. We didn’t want it to feel like ‘us and them’. We want the whole crowd to feel involved.

“We want to throw off the shackles and do something theatrical.”

Unsurprisingly, tickets havesold out.

The lads have promised to tour again soon — next time in a bigger venue.

  • They play The Cellar on Saturday. Tickets have sold out