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  • Richard Mutt

Knife Club. The most mysterious band in Punk Rock.

Updated: Dec 23, 2019

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

Mysterious Band, I wanna get close to you!


I was recently at a gig at the Lexington and I was handed a very curious flyer. It was for a band called Knife Club, with a hashtag saying #whoareknifeclub?

I asked the girl who handed it to me what it was all about. I was intrigued. I was told it was a new musical project. I got chatting with her and sold her a copy of issue one of The Blind Man.


She loved it (and got it’s cultural reference). She told me that it was something that the band would love. We swapped phone numbers and low and behold, I get a message two days later saying that the band loved the zine and wanted to do their first interview with me. They said they wanted it to be something small and under the radar, that was difficult for people to find. I was intrigued even more, so I couldn’t resist agreeing. Their only conditions were that it be published online (it's actually the reason I finally set up this blog), as well as in issue two of the print zine and that the interview had to be done over the phone so I didn’t know who the band were. So many questions.


Had I discovered the new Banksy?


Would I get to hear any music?


Who were these people?


Was it actually worthwhile in any way whatsoever, or just a load of overhyped nonsense?


Would anyone ever even hear about them with this odd style of promotion?


Why me?


So many questions, many of which remain unanswered…


RM) So I’ll start with the obvious, who are Knife Club?

KC) We are Knife Club!


RM) Why are you keeping yourselves anonymous?

KC) In a world obsessed with the internet and social media it has become less and less relevant to have any sort of mystery. We didn’t want to comply with that. We wanted to remove our identity in an attempt to cut though the ‘me, me, me’ culture we see everywhere.


RM) Is this just a carefully orchestrated marketing plan?

KC) We are DIY to the core. We have no budget. We must exist outside of advertising budgets. In a culture that knows everything about everyone, not knowing is more unique. We must work with what we have. We must attempt to stab through an oversaturated market.


RM) You mention DIY culture. Is that something you are involved with?

KC) We lurk and exist in the basement bars and underbelly of culture. We believe these places to be the cutting edge of society. That is where the real ideas exist. The underground is starting to bubble and it will rise again to challenge how society is evolving. We believe that the underground can be the catalyst for social and political change.


RM: I have to ask about the name. Is it deliberately controversial? How did it come about?

KC: It is a reference to Hannah Höch’s photomontage ‘Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser Dada durch die letzte Weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands’ (Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany).

The collage is about the establishment literally benefitting from chaos of its own making, the knife in the title being a metaphor for cutting away at the fabric of society, but also a reference to the collage technique. We felt this piece was especially relevant right now. The club element of our name relates to the Dadaists, of which Höch was a pivotal part, who were a group, or club of leftist artists who challenged the establishment through anti-art, protest art and satirical art. Like many, we have have always felt that the Dada movement was the original punk rock and certainly its existence was what paved the way for any future artistic protest collective or movement. Misjudgements that our name is deliberately controversial are possibly in fitting with Dada’s attack on censorship of the left and Höch’s critique of mass public acceptance of establishment greed. Both of which eventually led to the re-emergence of the right.


RM) When can we hear your music?

KC) Knife Club will be revealed in early 2020. We will be playing gigs and releasing music.


RM) What does your music sound like?

KC) We cut and slice influence from many genres. We are loud. Lots of breakdowns and drum stabs.


RM) How are you spreading the word about your music?

KC) We have approached independent labels, artists and musicians, some of whom, after assurances about our ethos, were kind enough to share flyers with no further information about us and support our project. We hope our name will be spread further by word of mouth.


RM) At your ideal gig, which bands would you share a stage with?

KC) Knife Party, The Knife, Scissor Sisters, Shonen Knife, Young Knives.


And then they cut the interview short. So even after my brief encounter with this elusive new act I still know very little. But I am absolutely intrigued. I wonder if they will live up to the hype or if this will even work in any way whatsoever. That said, I have heard several people talking about it and those flyers are appearing in plenty of venues. I’ve certainly built them up in my head. I find myself wanting them to be brilliant and wanting their ‘hype’ strategy to work.

It’s certainly original… Or is it? Actually, it’s probably not… But, I’m over the moon to be involved in some way. I have been assured I’ll be one of the first to hear the band too.

Maybe they will be at the cutting edge of alternative music…




Richard Mutt

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