Image credit: Melissa van Koldam @_melfotografie_
King No-One kick start the new year with a brand new release ‘Neighbours’, lifted from the upcoming EP due early next year and will hit the road with a clutch of shows across the UK and EU starting February 2023.
Following on the recently acclaimed single ‘Dead Hotel’, ‘Neighbours’ continues the group’s musical evolution, a consuming sonic and thematic musical experience, peppered with their own inimitable anecdotes and musings. They say: “Neighbours is about letting go of fears of people’s expectations of yourself. In that little way where society tries to bend you into the person that they want you to be. Neighbours boast an arrogant reply of ‘Surprise, you don’t know us at all, now F**k off’ A song for all the people who’ve felt society has forced them into a jar instead of trying to understand them. The story metaphor is inspired by the most horrific NYE party we’ve ever had where Zach drove a toy car through James’ bedroom door.”
Initially starting life as an important childhood friendship between Zach and guitarist Joe Martin, from the beginning the pair’s bond was an integral lifeline in a small Yorkshire town that offered few others. Both are neurodivergent, and Zach recalls the difficulties of growing up in a community with little understanding of either’s point of view. “It wasn’t a particularly supportive town or very diverse in any sense. Joe was the only other person who understood me and I understood him; we both offered what each other was missing,” he explains. “Our relationship is more like a brotherhood than a friendship.”
Along the way, the pair had invited drummer James Basile to join the fold. Having already begun to take the band they’d christened King No-One for its egalitarian principles (“It’s about the idea that no-one is above anyone else, no matter your gender, sexuality, race or anything”) seriously, the then-17-year-olds decided not to buy tickets for that year’s Leeds Festival, convinced they’d find a way to play. A few months later, having won a battle of the bands, they were on the Leeds stage with a renewed belief in what they had started to create. “That small action was enough for us all to have full confidence in us as a band,” he nods.
If there’s a second thread that weaves itself alongside King No-One’s (completed by recently-joined bassist Rob Gration) message of hard-earned self-celebration, it’s one of an equal sense of hard work and determination. Having had a taste of success, but with no financial backing or support behind them, the band decided to take matters into their own hands, busking on the streets of York and building a fanbase in the most grassroots way possible. The money they made went back into the band to fund recordings; by the time they’d put some early songs online and announced a self-promoted gig in a small local venue, they’d already earned a following that was queueing down the street to get in.
And so to forthcoming EP ‘Dead Hotel’. Having drip-fed a series of singles over the past few years following 2019’s debut ‘OOMM’ EP, the release marks the first step towards King No-One 2.0. The signature infectious pop-rock riffs and stadium-sized hooks are still present and correct, but this time, following a productive period in which Zach earned himself a Masters in songwriting, everything is souped up – from the probing lyrical world he creates to the ‘80s goth-indie drama that tinges its wares.
“We’re trying to create a little world with this EP, from the songs to the imagery to every idea that comes out – it’s all come from us,” Zach enthuses. “When you listen to that vinyl, you’re opening the door to the Dead Hotel and you can hear these concepts of nihilism and ego death and fragility. They’re the pillars of your typical societal human male all shattering because they’re a construct anyway.”
However, having become the first unsigned band to ever get booked for the NME/ Radio One stage at Reading and Leeds; having nurtured their fanbase from nothing to selling out shows up and down the country whilst remaining completely independent; having cultivated and built a band that really means something, not just for its members but for all the fans that are also seeking something truer and better from life, expectation is something that King No-One are never ones to be bound by.
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