Jazz Fusion | 2022–present

Knats are a Newcastle upon Tyne quintet built around the rhythm section partnership of bassist Stan Woodward and drummer King David-Ike Elechi, two childhood friends who came up through the UK club music of the North East before discovering jazz fusion and redirecting everything they knew about groove and energy into a new context. Moving to London in 2022 to study at Trinity Laban, the pair assembled a full band with trumpeter Ferg Kilsby, keyboardist Sandro Shargorodsky, and tenor saxophonist George Johnson, signed to Gearbox Records in 2024, and released their self-titled debut album in spring 2025, recorded at Damon Albarn's Studio 13. The record covers Joe Henderson's "Black Narcissus" (1974) and sits in a lineage that runs from the Headhunters and Weather Report through UK club music, without sounding particularly like either. Their second album, "A Great Day in Newcastle" (Gearbox, 2026), produced by Geordie Greep and featuring spoken word poet Cooper Robson, moves into explicitly narrative North East territory, its themes covering working-class life, crime, and regional identity under the band's own description of Geordie Noir.