They’re Racing this time
The Checks’ successors are rocking this summer, writes Anabela Rea.
The Checks were the original Smokefree Rockquest success story: the school band from Devonport reached the finals of a talent contest, secured a fouralbum deal with Sony and toured with Oasis, The Hives, REM, AC/DC, The Killers, and Muse.
They split five years ago, but their offspring is a band called Racing, a hybrid of three different bands, but half of them derived from The Checks.
Checks singer Ed Knowles and lead guitarist Sven Pettersen have paired up with Izaak Houston, of Space Creeps, on drums, and Daniel Barrett, from Sherpa, on bass.
Having played together since the tender age of 15, when The Checks called it a day, Knowles and Pettersen never stopped writing. ‘‘We were lucky when The Checks broke up that we found such competent musicians ready to play with us. That was a blessing,’’ said Knowles.
Now Racing have recorded the pair’s work, sectioning some tracks into their EP, The Bass, which was released in September, and reserving the rest for a full-length album this year.
Their choice of name reflects the goal and pace for four musicians on top of their game. ‘‘Somehow it’s set the tone, because it kind of means momentum,’’ said Pettersen.
The imaginary landscape of the EP is one Knowles, waxing lyrical, described as a ‘‘post apocalyptic Brighton.’’
‘‘Like if all those big old hotels on the waterfront were empty and abandoned and you and a few other people were just wandering around. The place was still relatively functioning, like the nightclubs still worked, but all the real jobs and all the real things you had to do in the world didn’t exist. And it would always be late evening.’’
Knowles and Pettersen have been influenced by everything from The Rolling Stones to Jamiroquai, Van Morrison and Donna Summer. ‘‘For me it’s been a strange balance between listening to a band called Dead Meadow, lots of Queens of the Stone Age and then things like Madonna and Kylie Minogue,’’ said Pettersen, ‘‘with those perfect pop grooves and melodies.’’
Racing aim to hypnotise. ‘‘It has to be something that takes you on a journey,’’ he said. ‘‘If you just feel the same way before listening, that’s not right.’’
‘‘The one way to do it is to make something crazy repetitive that continues to build in energy. That’s kind of a challenge for us and if we achieve that, it should really have a hypnotic effect.’’
Mick Jagger has been a strong influence on Knowles of late. ‘‘The way he sings and bends his words,’’ said the singer.
‘‘To be honest, I couldn’t sing when we started. I just wanted to dress up like David Bowie or Liam Gallagher and be a bit of a t .... That’s really what I wanted to do. So we started a band.’’
‘‘Everyone else in The Checks could play and was already quite competent, but I just kind of winged it.’’
Winging it or not, at some point Knowles would have discovered he had one hell of a vocal range.
‘‘I guess in some ways I’m a bit of a magpie,’’ he said. ‘‘I steal different things from different artists I like. I have kind of a library of characters that I play on stage. Each of them has a voice and I think over the years I’ve built that library and so the result is that you sing a lot of different ways.’’
So what’s disco got to do with it? ‘‘I think we all feel a connection to disco,’’ said Knowles. ‘‘It comes through that filter of the late 70s, how Zeppelin brought disco into guitar music. Because it has such a hypnotic, uplifting, nocturnal feel and it’s so easy to digest.’’
‘‘We like to dance, to be honest. Who doesn’t like to dance?’’ said Pettersen. ‘‘So much of rock’n’roll music turns into a dudesy thing where it’s just a row of dudes rocking back and forth slowly.
‘‘I think when rock’n’roll started, it was always dance music. Whether it was a marriage of country and blues, but then someone like Little Richard came along and would turn it all the way up, speed it up, make it a bit more wild so that people could dance and get freaky.’’
‘‘I think we’re doing our version of that. Whether it’s Madonna or Donna Summer or Isaac Hayes, I still just think of it all as rock’n’roll really, because it has a wild spirit and a strong groove.’’
Racing play the Splore Festival on February 24.
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