EVENING CHRONICLE (Newcastle, UK)
August 11, 2006 Friday
Edition 1
We’re next big thing
They’re being touted as the next big thing and so the good news for
Tynesiders is that Kasabian are coming to the North East this year
after announcing a tour that includes a stop off at the Metro Arena
on Friday, December 8.
They modestly describe themselves as a "wake-up call to British
music. Big time! Britain needs a new band to breathe life into the
British people again. We’ll blow a hole in rock `n’ roll. We’re the
saviours of a nation’s music."
Named after Charles Manson’s pregnant getaway driver, Linda Kasabian,
the moniker is also Armenian for `butcher’ – appropriate for a band
who work with a cut-and-paste collage of sound. It’s also fitting for
a gang with ambitions to cut the pap out of pop.
Kasabian grew up in Leicester, a city hidden in a sprawl of suburbs.
The kind of place where you listen to music, watch football, get
drunk and wander the street at night singing, because there’s nothing
else to do. Kasabian were 17 when they began making music seriously.
The Brit-Pop boom gave them the impetus to form a band, but it was
their love of hardcore electronica that led them to buy a computer.
Over the past year Kasabian have attracted fans as disparate as Noel
Gallagher and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who announced that he likes to
work out to their music. The band enjoyed a hugely successful
festival season. Their celebrated 2005 Glastonbury performance saw
sales of their double platinum debut album rocket 200%, propelling
the record from Number 76 to Number 27. Kasabian also collected
reverential critical accolades for their headline slots at
Reading/Leeds, Wireless (Hyde Park), T in The Park and Oxygen.
Kasabian recently toured with Oasis in the US, where sales of their
album have exceeded 200,000 since its release last Spring. Their
debut US single Club Foot was play-listed at over 40 Modern Rock
radio stations and the band have appeared on various TV shows,
including Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel and The Late Late Show. Tracks from
their album have also featured on episodes of Desperate Housewives,
The OC and CSI.
Currently working on their new album, due out later this year, how
will Kasabian top the last 12 months? A year, in which, they
conquered Glastonbury, stole the show at Reading/Leeds and blazed a
trail across America with Oasis.
"Our next record is gonna be a million times better than the first
record," says Tom Meighan.
"We just wanna make that classic British album like Dark Side Of The
Moon. It’s rock `n’ roll, it’s sexy and it’s good and dirty."
"It’s gonna be intelligent as well," adds Serge Pizzorno. "We’ve
never been a pub rock band. I know people like to put us in a box as
these lads that `ave it’, and we do enjoy ourselves, but we’re
serious about our music.
"We’re so excited. Now’s the time to stand up and be counted. If we
really are the band we say we are, we’ll be there and we’ll still be
around in years to come."
We just wanna make that classic British album like Dark Side Of The
Moon. It’s rock `n’ roll, it’s sexy and it’s good and dirty