Fine Night Elements, a working‑class North East band, release their new single Around This Sun, the second track from their forthcoming debut EP All We Know, due in late April. The track grows from a stark acoustic reflection on war, homelessness and addiction. Sonically, it opens atmospherically with tender acoustic strums, ambient synth washes and an emotive vocal that slowly gathers weight, rising into a soaring chorus carried by meandering rhythms before haunting ‘ohs’, and a Nick McCabe‑esque guitar solo spirals through the mix and drives the track toward an ascendant, shimmering finish.
Here, the band give us a flavour of the track’s sound with their FFO…
Foals – London Thunder
This track has so much space to begin with and then builds into something big and beautiful, it is brilliantly written. Lush yet subtle guitar tones as well as synth pads that are introduced as the song progresses, this is a great example of how our track ‘Around This Sun’ builds and gets bigger with each section, adding new layers throughout the track. The lyrics in ‘London Thunder’ are really poignant and you can hear how heartfelt they are being sung, we hope our track emulates that in its own way. Foals are a huge inspiration to our guitarist Ethan, the album that this track is from is one of the key reasons he decided to pick up the guitar for the first time.
Radiohead – All I Need
The groove in All I Need is undeniable. The bass and drums are locked in from the onset and then layers and melodies grow on top of that, leading to one of the most perfectly crafted songs of all time. That initial groove creates a foundation for textures to be added with piano, synth and guitars all coming in gradually before the heavy crashing cymbals at the end allowing for the the vocals to take off. For ‘Around This Sun’, the acoustic and bass are that foundation, and our singer Kristian definitely tried to pay homage to that Thom Yorke soaring approach at the end of our track. With the last 2 lines of vocals breaking in and out of falsetto to act as the final part in the crescendo that the whole track has built up to, while the cymbals are crashing and the rest of the guitar layers feel huge.
Catfish and the Battlement – Hourglass
When our drummer Luke first heard the early layout of Around this Sun he was immediately drawn to the work of Catfish and the Bottlemen, knowing they are masters at building songs up naturally. Songs like Postpone and Homesick, they mirror the explosive outro that our track was aiming for.
Luke mentioned that he wanted to pull back on the drums as much as possible initially, to allow the guitars and vocals to shine through, before contrasting that in the outro with a huge drum sound. The song Hourglass starts very minimal, and the drums are just accenting the melody in a subtle way when needed.
Bob Hall has a great way of breaking through drawn out guitar notes with well placed snare and cymbal hits, to drive the song out. We definitely had this in the back of our minds when we were trying to piece together the final version of our track.
