YOUNG KNIVES share new single ‘Cause & Effect’
New album Landfill out Jan 24th 2025 via Gadzook
UK headline tour dates on sale
Young Knives | Photo credit: Hannah Carter
Young Knives are today sharing new single ‘Cause & Effect‘, the latest new music to be taken from forthcoming album Landfill.
‘Cause & Effect’ follows the album’s lead single ‘Dissolution‘ a song that cast scuffed-up, scratchy guitars and tumbling piano motifs alongside lyrics aimed at dismantling the ego. It arrives just weeks ahead of Landfill‘s release, which has already drawn praise in UK press as being “gleefully surrealist” (Classic Pop) and “a gloriously idiosyncratic listen” (Uncut 8/10). ‘Cause & Effect’ is characteristically peculiar and discordant, the band creating a patchwork of murmuring synths, voice modulation and ringing guitars to consider their own reality.
Lead singer and guitarist Henry Dartnall says of the song: “The central idea behind the lyrics is a bit obscure: I became aware of a few problems with the concept of time that inspired the song. The main problem is that time seems to be kind of illusory. What I mean by that is that anything outside of the present moment is basically just a thought. And the present moment doesn’t seem to pass, ie. it is always the present moment. “Cause & Effect” is entirely a time-based concept: You do one thing and it makes another thing happen, in time. But if time is an illusion, then what is really happening? It also implies somehow that we can control the world, like we understand how our actions now effect our future.
Musically the track is basically middle-aged white men rapping. At no point in the process have we questioned whether it’s OK for us to rap, it’s just a thing we did: We are pretty much past caring at this point, you just have to launch into these things and see what happens. I am a huge Hip Hop fan like any self-respecting middle aged white man should be so it made sense to give it a whizz. I wrote the lyrics in about 3 hours and recorded them
the same day.”
Pre-order new album Landfill HERE
Landfill was produced by the band in their studio in Oxfordshire and Mixed by Mike Lindsay of Tuung.
Hear new single ‘Cause & Effect’ on streaming services here and share the lyric video via YouTube below.
Young Knives will be taking their live show on the road in the UK on top of the new album release. Tickets are on sale now here.
Young Knives 2025 UK headline tour dates
Tues 28th Jan – Joiners, Southampton, UK
Weds 29th Jan – Strange Brew, Bristol, UK
Thurs 30th Jan – Underworld, London, UK
Fri 31st Jan – The Bullingdon, Oxford, UK
Sat 1st Feb – Komedia, Brighton, UK – SOLD OUT
Tues 4th Feb – Hare & Hounds, Birmingham, UK
Weds 5th Feb – Deaf Institute, Manchester, UK
Thurs 6th Feb – Future Yard, Birkenhead, UK
Fri 7th Feb – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, UK
Sat 8th Feb – Hug & Pint, Glasgow, UK – SOLD OUT
Young Knives UK headline tour poster
More about Young Knives’ new album Landfill
Four years have passed since Young Knives’ last studio outing – 2020’s aggressive and philosophical look at humanity’s propensity for hyper-violence, Barbarians – and during this time the band have taken a step to consider the changing of the world around them, their place in it, and the sometimes-futile pursuit of controlling what it is that we leave behind when we’re gone.
Music fans will pick-up on the tongue-in-cheek use of the word “landfill” as an album title from a band that emerged during the post-indie-rock-revival of the 00s. But rather than dwelling on the derogatory landfill stick that has sometimes comes to beat them, Young Knives instead use this coming phase of their career to contemplate the nature of existence and how best to catalogue it through song. As lead singer and guitarist Henry Dartnall puts it, “it’s a record is about letting things go before they are taken from you, including the carefully curated images of ourselves. Embracing everything the world throws at you and not taking it to heart.”
Fans of Young Knives may be forgiven for thinking that Landfill may be about to enter nihilistic territory, and with the band being evicted from their long-time home and studio during the recording process it is true to say that the album is imbued with a fear of the unknown, as adrenaline stokes the fires of vitriol. However, the record is far more concerned with retaining a philosophical outlook on how we view the passing of time, best exemplified by lead single ‘Dissolution‘ which is partly inspired by the Hitchiker’s Guide To The Galaxy quote “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.” Dartnall expands: “I love ideas like this. What an amazing way to present such a deep idea but also make it fun. I just wanted to experiment with doing our version of that. You can’t force ideas on people, you can just suggest them and leave them hanging in a way that people might one day consider if they feel like it.”
We recorded the song to an old tape machine as a throwaway experiment. The tape we used was from a car boot sale and all perished and dusty. The channels of the tape machine kept failing because they were all clogged up with tape oxide. It was a live take and we did it with our friend’s Silke and Max Blansjaar playing drums and piano. It was also recorded at the end of our time in the studio we have had since we started together, so we were in the middle of packing it down. It felt like we were dismantling everything about our band and music so it all made sense at the time and felt very apt”
As a parting thought on the idea of identity and legacy, he offers: “We often think we have to fight the world to get success and legacy, or even just security and other such weird concepts. But even the most successful people in history have only postponed their second death (the last day someone says your name) by 500 – 2000 years tops. After that you are Landfill FOREVER. So why do we do it to ourselves?”
Young Knives – Landfill album artwork
Young Knives – Landfill tracklisting
1. A Memory Of Venom
2. Ugly House
3. Cause & Effect
4. The People From the Second Way
5. Dissolution
6. No Sound
7. Your car has arrived
8. Gone, Gone, Completely Gone
9. Love The Knives
10. Fresh Meat