Knats - A Great Day in Newcastle (2026 Gearbox Records Vinyl LP)

Knats - A Great Day in Newcastle | Vinyl LP - 2026 Gearbox Records (GB4012)

Three lifelong friends from Newcastle built this band. Stan Woodward plays bass, writes most of the music and handles the arrangements alongside King David Ike-Elechi on drums and Ferg Kilsby on trumpet. For their second album they brought in Geordie Greep, the black midi guitarist and solo artist, as producer and guitarist on every track. They also brought in Cooper Robson, a poet whose words carry seven of the nine tracks.

The album's compositional approach is unusual for a jazz-fusion record. Woodward builds his pieces around Olivier Messiaen's modes of limited transposition, creating harmonic colour that sounds suspended and unresolved without losing its rhythmic drive. The press materials describe this as "Geordie Jazz Noir." That phrase does more work than most genre labels: the music is dark, narrative-driven, rooted in a specific place, and persistently funny despite the subject matter.

"7 Bridges to Burn" opens with a piece written and arranged by pianist Josh Mitchell-Rayner, the one track not written by Woodward. "Gainsborough Grove" and "Wor Jackie" follow. "Wor Jackie" is the album's emotional anchor: the story of Jackie Milburn, Newcastle United's greatest goalscorer, who split his working days between the football pitch and the coal mine. George Johnson's tenor saxophone and Woodward's bass drive the rhythm while Robson's poetry navigates the story. "Messy-In" and "Azure Blues" (co-written with Kilsby) close Side A. Side B opens with "Bigg Market Scrappa" and "Carpet Doctor" before "Never Gonna Be a Boxer," which the band described as a tongue-in-cheek story about a young man pressured into fighting culture who knows it is not in his nature. "Farewell Johnny Miner" closes the album. The song is by folk songwriter Ed Pickford, the intro song written by Woodward, and the track incorporates BBC interview material from Durham miners recorded in the 1960s. Woodward, Ike-Elechi and Kilsby sing alongside Robson.