Biography

Spanning the wilds of rural England to the streets of East London – and with the spirit of the American Plains searing through them – Blackbud have made an explosive second album that ushers in for them a new and definitive phase.

Joe Taylor (guitar/vocals), Adam Newton (bass) and Sam Nadel (drums) were still teenagers when they formed in Wiltshire and signed with Independiente. Nevertheless, their 2006 debut ‘From The Sky’ gained widespread acclaim and attracted famous fans in the shape of Jimmy Page, Michael Eavis, Zane Lowe and Steve Lamacq. Yet by the time they came off the road after two years of solid touring, they found themselves ready for a break. Relocating to Bristol and London, they decided to take time out and not rush into following it up. “We’d worked really hard,” says Sam ‘”we were really pleased with what we’d done, but we knew that there was a hell of a lot more to do. We wanted to give ourselves a bit of space.”

So they stopped: travelled, took stock, and got back to being human. And then, after a period of space, they decided upon a period of intensity, so they found the Moor House cottage, near Cheltenham, the most isolated place they could find. There, with lyrics permanently spread over the living room floor and a fridge overflowing with beer, they would spend hours jamming Joe’s new batch of songs into what would become a cohesive album.

"It was so far away from civilisation you could make as much noise as you could possibly want," says the drummer. "It didn’t even have a proper road or anything – just wilderness with mud tracks leading to the cottage. You just didn’t have any chance of seeing anyone else. You might see some animals if you were lucky, but for about six miles there was just no-one. It worked for us, not having the distractions, it was like some weird rehab situation, except we weren’t there to kick any bad habits! After the first few days of realising there’s nothing to do but write wee got really productive."

Arctic Monkeys and The Coral producer Mike Crossey came to Moor House at the very end of the process, and pre-production began. But where the rural isolation of Moor House had inspired a grand, majestic quality in the songs, a significant new sound took shape as the band took up residence in Shoreditch for the recording.

“Writing the songs in the countryside definitely had an influence,” says Sam “but recording them in East London inspired a different sort of energy. After a heavy day we would go out to places like Charlie Wrights and Cargo and see some of the best musicians around. That really has an effect on you when you go back into the studio the next morning.”

The breadth of the vision is evident all over ‘Blackbud’. From the way lead track ‘Left Your Arms Empty’ turns disarmingly aggressive to the beats that underpin ‘You Can Run’, Or the propulsive country optimism of ‘So it Seems’, and the simple, beautiful longing of ‘Road To Nowhere’. You might say they’ve toughened up, or you might just say they’ve relaxed. Either way, it’s a fine consolidation of who they are.

“We feel like we did things the opposite way round,” says Sam. “Our first record was just dense, complex – we took a lot more historic references on that record. This time, we’ve gone back to basics. We’ve gone back to a raw, rougher kind of thing. Mike represented all of those things to us and gave us the confidence to know where to stop. To know that one really amazing guitar part is enough and you don’t have to put five more on top of each other because that will start to water things down eventually.”

"Mike encouraged us to go our own way on this record" continues Sam. “We’ve always had such a different way of doing things than other bands – I’ve spent a lot of time working with other musicians and other bands and realised just how different we are. We don’t listen to contemporary music very much and a lot of these things don’t come out in the normal way really. Which is a good thing. We’re quite unpredictable. We're not afraid to set our own standards".