Down Around

Concert footage from a K-Line gig at Dingwalls, London edited by Matt & Sophie Elmy to fit reasonably closely with the audio of “Down Around” taken from the 2nd K-Line EP. Filmed by Matt Elmy & Graham Pryor.

Stay Poor

A very low-fi video of “Stay Poor” a song taken from K-Line’s first E.P. “In The Red”. Filmed and edited by Roop Coulson (who also recorded & mixed the song).  

There were a couple of versions of K-Line that knocked around in rehearsal rooms in various parts of London before the line-up that most of you know about got together and starting gigging and recording. The very first one featured me on guitar & vocals with Scott Stewart on drums and Micha Meisterling on bass. 1 or 2 rehearsals in, Scott (who was playing guitar in the VERY mighty, Dead Inside), enlisted Paul Symes - also from Dead Inside - to come in on 2nd guitar. Soon after that Micha announced he was moving back to Germany for work reasons and so I asked my old partner in crime, Paul Duncan, to join on bass.

This line-up of Paul, Paul, Scott and me was together for maybe 6 months. We wrote a bunch of songs and rehearsed sporadically. There was even talk of where to play our first show. After a while though it became apparent that Paul & Scott were getting too busy touring with Dead Inside to play in K-Line too so we decided to bring a 4-track along to the next rehearsal and record what we had for posterity. I added the vocals later at home. The songs below are the result of that exercise.

 

 Layers: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Stay Poor: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Start To Try (December Grey): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Manifest Destiny: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Days of Empire: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Where's Evolution?: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Fragile: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

• Ed Wenn - Vocals & guitar
• Paul Duncan - Bass
• Scott Stewart - Drums
• Paul Symes - Guitar

All in all they are a bunch of promising, but very rough and mostly unfinished songs; a glimpse if you like into where this line-up may have headed had we tightened up and started playing. They’re a bit noodly in places and not direct enough, but this was all pretty embryonic stuff. At the time I was gutted that Paul & Scott left, but then I wasn’t to know that James, Zac and later Rich, were just around the corner. Looking back on it now I’m honoured to have played with Paul & Scott bearing in mind where Dead Inside & later Bullet Union went; 2 very talented men.

If you’re a K-Line fan you’ll recognise Stay Poor, but nothing else. If you’re a Liquidman fan you’ll have worked out that the lyric to Start To Try is almost identical to December Grey. I still wished we’d worked on Layers (one of my fave songs) and possibly Fragile with the final K-Line line-up, but Zac didn’t want to sing any of my lyrics for whatever reason and so Stay Poor remains the only song from this first incarnation that we took further.

Paul’s been beavering away over the Easter break battling with discog.com and last.fm to get some info and music content available on those two sites. The Sink & K-Line pages at last.fm are looking pretty good and worth a visit if you’re a last.fm user. Actually, thinking about it, there isn’t currently a lot of K-Line music available on this site so might be worth a visit to last.fm if you want to fill your boots.

More soon about our ongoing efforts getting the back catalogue available on last.fm and documented via discog.com

K-Line played its last gig in December 2004, bringing to an end both one of the most fun and the most frustrating bands I’ve ever had the pleasure to play in. In September that year we’d finally finished recording 3 songs that I think we’d started in February…and which had certainly been written for a good deal longer than that. Way too long for a punk band. The original reason for recording them at all was to form our half of a split mini-LP with friends, Killerest Expression. They completed theirs 6 months before we did and then the label decided to not pursue it anyway, which is just as well because they’d have had a long time to wait for the K-Line contribution. As a result of the delays and other problems I was getting restless and had already rehearsed and recorded the 3 Liquidman songs with Damion, Sid & John (in 3 days) as an antidote to the frustration of recording with K-Line. When these songs were finally finished I was so past caring that I’m not sure I even played them through together more than once. The memories from that time weren’t good and so I kind of gave up on the songs. Last year someone asked me what they were called and I honestly couldn’t remember the titles.

Anyway, 2+ years later I’m finally able to listen to these songs with the required degree of detachment and guess what? They’re actually pretty darned good and definitely worth a listen. Interesting also because they also show the different writing styles of myself, Rich and Paul. Homeland or Die was mostly written by me (Rich added the excellent chuggy end section), Radiate was mostly written by Rich and Hibernate ‘88 was mostly written by Paul. Zac wrote all the lyrics and we arranged them all as a band. If you liked the K-Line releases then you’ll definitely like these; if this is your first taste of K-Line, then it’s as good a place to start as any and look out here for more stuff in the future.

• Homeland or Die (4.7MB)
• Radiate (6.6MB)
• Hibernate ‘88 (3.5MB)