This month marks the 34th anniversary of the release of Nirvana’s breakthrough album Nevermind, and to celebrate Phnom Penh band Knell is reforming for a run of shows playing the entire album. Ahead of the first such show at Noisy Chili on Friday night, Knell guitarist Ryan Wright sat down with LengPleng.
LP: Aside from the obvious, what was the particular inspiration for this project?
RW: Within the last six months I started listening to the album a lot, remembering how bad-ass it is. Every song is super-catchy, and I found I really wanted to play it live. At the same time, I’ve been looking for a chance to get Knell back together again. We’ve got all the gear but we’re all just sitting around doing nothing with our down time. We all have different schedules now. So I thought an easy way to get the band back on track would be to work on Nevermind. We can all learn our parts at home and then bring it to the rehearsal room.
LP: When did Knell last perform, and how did that line-up differ from the current one?
RW: Knell hasn’t played since 2019, just before COVID. Having a band here, trying to do originals is difficult, with the transient nature of the scene – for us it’s always been drummers and singers. You teach them the setlist, they play it once, and then they announce they’re moving on. We’re a five piece – me, Doug Marsden, Wayne Clowes, the main three, as it has been for years. We have Kuzi Ekrem back on drums after a break of about a decade. And we’ve brought in Vince Solomons on vocals. He fits right in there, it’s his style. We’ve been practicing for three or four months – we only actually played the setlist in full yesterday for the first time.
LP: So first Noisy Chili, then…?
RW: We’ll be doing Halloween at Hometown Hangout, and probably DaveFest on Koh Rong Samloeun, and we’re hoping to play at the Kampot Craft Beer Festival in February. The live music there is always great. We’re hoping to do about four shows, let it run its course, then we can start slowly doing other stuff on the side.
LP: It’s certainly an album that has lasted in the pop cultural imagination, and it’s interesting to note that none of the band were old enough to be rushing out to buy it when it was first released in 1991.
RW: I’ve been listening to it since the mid-90s, I was a bit too young for the first release, but it’s always been there. It was ground-breaking stuff, and 34 years later it hasn’t aged, like all the timeless music. The production is clean as a whistle. It’s beyond catchy – the simplest, poppy riffs. And the drums – I remember watching an interview with Dave Grohl talking about using a lot of disco and funk beats, which makes that whole easy fun groove. And Chris Novoselic’s bass carries the whole album – everything fits together proper perfectly. I’m hoping people do get caught up in the moment – because we’re playing it from front to back, it’s all muscle memory for them as well, they know what’s coming.
LP: So the show is the whole Nevermind album, from start to finish?
RW: We thought about whether we should chop anything out, and maybe do other stuff, but in the end we didn’t think so. It all just fits into place so well. Rearrange the order? Just do Nirvana favourites? Nope. And it’s the 34th anniversary this month – but that was by sheer luck.
Knell will play Nevermind at Noisy Chili on Friday 5 from 8 pm.
Knell back in 2016
New boy: Vince Solomons
Returnee: Kuzi Ekrem
