2010年7月21日Keane在Young Hollywood的采访视频：Paul McCartney Loves Keane

Paul McCartney Loves Keane
来源：http://www.younghollywood.com/videos/music/rockalternative/paul-mccartney-loves-keane.html

Keane members Richard and Tom sit down with us at The Greek Theatre’s VIP Lounge to discuss their secret behind giving a stellar performance, the evolution of their music over the years, and the surprising news of a well known celebrity fan. Hosted by Michelle Marie.

2010年8月Keane在Last.fm Discover表演+采访

Artist of the week: Keane
http://lastfmdiscover.radio.com/2010/08/16/artist-of-the-week-keane/
2010-8-16

Keane’s latest release, the EP Night Train, was released in May of this year. The songs, recorded all over the world, are culled primarily from scraps, leftovers and unfinished songs. Special guests include K’Naan on two tracks and Tigarah covering Yellow Magic Orchestra.

Click through to see their exclusive in-studio performances of “Stop For A Minute,” “Clear Skies,” My Shadow” from Night Train. By request, they make me happy and go back to the debut album Hopes And Fears to do a stunning version of “Bend And Break.” Be sure to listen to their interview which details the making of this eclectic EP and stories behind some of the songs.

Last.fm Discover gladly welcomed Tom Chaplin, Tim Rice-Oxley, Richard Hughes and Jesse Quin of Keane to our studio following the release of the Night Train EP. Instead of the traditional ways of recording, Keane used studios in Berlin, Brisbane, Copenhagen, London, Los Angeles, Paris and Washington, DC during the Perfect Symmetry world tour.

This release is built around the K’Naan collaborations. The band’s original idea was to get Kanye West for “Looking Back” and get that “west coast vibe” to it, laid back, funky and soulful. Once they put together “Stop For A Minute,” they decided to go with K’Naan who they were fans of. They soon discovered that he in fact, was a fan of Keane as well.

They just wrapped up a small tour of the U.S. which included a spectacular show on a beautiful night in Brooklyn, NY on the waterfront. Tom Chaplin teased, they’ll be back soon. Their live show is one of the best you’ll ever see.

1. 采访音频
格式：zip 下载

2. 表演视频

Stop For A Minute

Clear Skies

My Shadow

Bend And Break

2010年8月5日Gigwise采访Tom: Kanye West是个音乐天才+谈起新专辑

Keane: ‘Kanye West Is A Musical Genius’
- They speak about new album…
August 05, 2010 by Jason Gregory
来源：http://www.gigwise.com/news/57753/Keane-%27Kanye-West-Is-A-Musical-Genius%27

全程采访视频
文件格式：flv 下载

Keane frontman Tom Chaplin has called Kanye West a “musical genius” and revealed that he may appear on their next studio album.

The group have maintained contact with the rapper since they were introduced at a recording studio in Paris two years ago.

In an interview with Gigwise, which you can watch on the Gigwise TV player on the right hand side of this page, Chaplin said West was still “a fan” of the band.

He also said he was hopeful they could spend some more time in the studio together.

“He’s kind of a magnetic person – a real force,” Chaplin told Gigwise.

“You feel when you’re around him that he’s pulling all these things along with him. He’s a great musical genius I guess.”

Keane are currently writing the follow-up to their last full album, 2008’s ‘Perfect Symmetry’.

Chaplin said the album had the potential to be a “poppy record”, and admitted that they were all “really excited about it”.

“Tim (Rice-Oxely, Keane’s principal composer) has written a load of songs already,” Chaplin added.

“He keeps doing this thing called the twenty song game at home where he sets up all his equipment at seven in the morning and he’s got 12 hours to write twenty songs.

“I guess it’s just a way to get stuff written and out there, and write without too many inhibitions.”

2010年7月21日LAist采访Richard

Interview: Richard Hughes on Keane’s New ‘Night Train’ EP
By Michele Reverte on Jul 21, 2010
来源：http://mobile.laist.com/2010/07/21/keane_richard_hughes.php

Keane’s latest EP, Night Train, is essentially a microcosm of their touring schedule these last few years. The UK band recorded and mixed the album’s eight tracks on planes, on trains and in seven different recording studios around the world—from Berlin to Brisbane.

The fact that this wasn’t a full-length record gave Keane (Tom Chaplin on lead vocals, Tim Rice-Oxley on keyboards and Richard Hughes on drums) a chance to experiment. Although they’ve already sold more than 10 million albums worldwide, Keane has a knack for bucking complacency in the pursuit of pushing their own creative boundaries. The EP even includes two guest vocalists—Somali/Canadian rapper K’Naan and Japanese baile funk MC Tigarah.

Last week, LAist caught up with Richard Hughes to learn more about Night Train, his tour photography, his work with Amnesty International, and the band’s gig tonight at the Greek Theatre.

LAist: “House Lights” really creates the mood for the album. Did you have fun experimenting percussion-wise for that song?

Richard Hughes: Well, the reason we call it “House Lights” is because it’s the music that’s played as we come on stage. We used it during the Perfect Symmetry tour and it’s basically comprised of random samples and the kind of debris that’s left at the end of making an album.

For instance, we found this enormous drum—a proper sort of marching drum—in a studio in Paris. We sampled it, and that’s the massive kick drum sound on the track. So Tim essentially built that song out of bits and pieces he found lying around his computer.

Following that thread, in the past you’ve said there’s nothing the band won’t use in the pursuit of making something that’s sonically intriguing. How did that come into play on this album?

Whenever I go into a drum shop anywhere in the world—which I do a lot—I never leave empty-handed. I always find a shaker or a tambourine or some bits of wood to bash together. And sometimes I’ve been given stuff by fans, such as little finger cymbals. So it’s always fun to try something new.

But perhaps the most interesting thing we did for this EP was include collaborations with K’Naan and Tigarah. That was probably the biggest experiment for Keane.

You recorded in quite a few different studios as you were making this album. Was that freeing? Was there something you were able to do as you were on the road that probably wouldn’t have happened if you’d been hunkered down in one studio and concentrating on a full LP?

Weirdly enough, the time pressure was really positive for us. There are people out there like Jack White, who can make an amazing record in a couple of days—and then there are people like us who can spend months and months creating a record and obsessing over everything. (laughs)

In a way, the fact that we had just one day in a Copenhagen studio or whatever really made us focus. That situation makes you do it quickly, and as a result, you can’t worry as much about the exact quality of everything. It’s quite liberating.

You also recorded additional tracks that didn’t end up on the EP. Are there plans to release any of those?

Those things always come out somehow. Take a song like “Back in Time” for example. I believe Tim wrote it in 2006 or something, and it was forgotten and left by the wayside. Then years later, I think it was our manager who said, “I was listening to some old demos and that song’s really great; you guys should take a crack at it.” I don’t know what was different in 2009 compared with 2006, but it just worked.

The reason we ended up cutting down the number of tracks was because it was looking more and more like an album. We made a lot of Night Train during our 18-month world tour for Perfect Symmetry, and we didn’t really have the desire to get back on the road to promote another full-length album for another 18 months.

Now that you’ve had a little time off, is a new full-length album in the near future?

Yeah, we hope to start working on something later this year.

On this album, Tim sings on “Your Love” and there’s a YouTube video of you singing during soundcheck. Any chance you’ll sing lead vocals on an upcoming song?

I’ve gotta tell you, that was absolutely terrifying. I felt naked without my drum kit! Until that moment, I had no idea how difficult it is to stand up—and I did it in front of practically nobody, by the way—and sing through a PA.

It left me with so much respect for Tom, Tim and Jesse [Jesse Quin, whom many consider to be Keane's unofficial fourth member]. They all do this on a regular basis. Tom of course does it all the time, Tim sings “Your Love” when we play it live, and Jesse plays in his own band, plus Tim and Jesse have a side project called Mt. Desolation in which they both sing.

You’ll be playing the Greek Theatre very soon. I seem to remember that in 2007 you were originally scheduled to play there but had to move to the Gibson Amphitheatre on account of a massive fire.

Yeah, the last time we had to move, so we’re really looking forward to returning because it’s been a number of years. It’s such a nice place, especially with the backdrop of the trees and the sunset.

Would you give us a preview of what to expect at the show—will it feature old and new songs?

Absolutely. The more records we put out, the more fun it is to play live and we try to include a good mix. Hopefully even the husbands, wives, boyfriends and girlfriends who are dragged along will recognize a few of the songs and enjoy the concert. We’ll definitely be playing from across our four records.

Speaking of LA shows, in 2008 you performed at Largo at the Coronet in a more intimate setting. What was your favorite aspect of that show?

The fact that there were no cell phones or cameras allowed. (laughs) People were really focused on the show, and the atmosphere in there was amazing. Honestly, when you ask most of us what our favorite show of that tour was, it was the Largo one.

How did that gig come together?

Tim and I had gone to see Jon Brion [LAist interview] play one of his ridiculously amazing shows when we were mixing the record in LA, and it was such a magical place. We were desperate to play there.

When things fell into place for us to do a show, Jon actually joined us on stage, and he brought a load of instruments with him. We didn’t know what half of them were! We just started messing around with them in soundcheck and—on the fly—figured out what we were going to do during the show.

It may not seem like it, but normally we’re quite well-rehearsed. It was really fun to just relax and throw that thing together. In fact, we just did a similar show in the UK at the iTunes Festival here at the Roundhouse in Camden. It was a really small acoustic set that, in a way, tried to recapture the vibe of that Largo show.

You collaborated with Jon Brion on a Perfect Symmetry track. Any chance you’ll work together again?

You know, that would be amazing. I hope so. He’s brilliant. It’s hard not to sound trite when you describe him. Honestly, I don’t know how his brain works, but I think he’s got twice the wiring!

Since you’ve spent so much time in Los Angeles, I was wondering what some of your favorite restaurants are. Since you’re a vegetarian, have you discovered any great veggie burgers in town?

I remember when we flew into Los Angeles to play Coachella. The tour bus took us straight to Astroburger and I was rather impressed with their veggie burger.

And as for other restaurants, we all sort of have this guilty pleasure of watching a lot of American TV. I’m on season three of Breaking Bad right now and it’s so incredible. But we’re all big fans of Entourage, so we sometimes hang out at the Urth Caffe and pretend to be attractive and successful and just laugh at ourselves.

Is it true that Tim had a fun afternoon hanging out with Bret Easton Ellis in LA a while ago?

I wouldn’t be surprised. Bret came down to the studio when we were mixing. He’s a longtime Keane fan who always gets the records first. If you get the thumbs-up from Bret, you know you’re on to a good thing!

Switching gears a bit, you’re an amazing photographer and it’s fun to see all the photos you post on the Keane blog. Will you be releasing a photo book in the near future?

I was going to release a book around the time of the last tour, and even did a rough edit with my friend Rob Sinclair, who does Keane’s lighting. By the time we got around to looking at the photos, they all looked quite out of date. When we have time, I’d like to try again and put together more of a retrospective photo book.

In the meantime, I’m entertaining myself with blogging them. The Internet is amazing for keeping in touch with your fans wherever they are in the world. I have the privilege of seeing so many different places that it’s nice to share the bits I like.

What have been some of your favorite photo locations? Do you find you get some of your best shots in unexpected places?

Yeah, you can get beautiful stuff at airports or when you’re just hanging around old venues that are unexpectedly beautiful or strange. For instance, there’s this place—I think it’s a venue in Seattle—that has an old disused swimming pool downstairs. You can see the separate entrances from when it was segregated, which is shocking to see. But that place is just a music venue now, so you would never know that an old junk-filled swimming pool is just down the stairs from the stage.

I try to explore when I have time. At one point, it was totally dark and I was exploring this building with just a torch [flashlight] and a camera. I turned the corner and came face to face with a mannequin, though I didn’t know that at the time. I swear to you I don’t think I’ve ever screamed more loudly like a girl. I don’t know what I said. It was probably something “Fuck!” or “Shit!” or “I’m dead!” Honestly, it was the most terrifying, ridiculous, hilarious thing.

How do you take photos during concerts? Do you mount a camera to your drum kit?

I try not to distract everyone too much by standing up all the time, but I sometimes hold my camera over the kick drum and try and take a wide-angle shot that gets everyone in, though sometimes it’s hard to get Tim because the drum kit gets in the way and he ends up behind a cymbal or something.

And your main cameras are a Nikon FG, an F6 and a pinhole?

Well, because I’m doing the blog, I’ve been shooting a lot more digital, so I have a D700 for that. It’s great because sometimes I’m able to get photos on the blog before people get home from the concert.

It’s a lot quicker if you don’t have to get film developed, but I still shoot a lot of film and I have a darkroom at home. In fact, for his birthday, I gave Tim a print I’d done in my darkroom.

In addition to your passion for photography, you’re also very involved with Amnesty International. Would you please share a little bit about that?

A man named Troy Davis is on death row in Jackson, Georgia. I first learned about him while listening to a news program called Democracy Now! During one episode, I heard Troy’s sister Martina speak about his situation.

Whether your passion is gender equality, animal rights, union rights, civil rights or all of the above—sometimes you hear something that really makes you decide to sit up and take action. And that’s the way I felt with Troy Davis’ story.
Where does his case stand now?

Troy just had a hearing down in Savannah and right now a judge is deciding what to do. He heard testimony from a lot of witnesses—including stuff that had never before been heard in court, such as a testimony from someone who said he’d seen a different person carrying out the murder that Troy was convicted of.

Over the last few years, former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and others have spoken out in support of Troy getting a new trial or evidentiary hearing. How have you gotten involved in spreading the word?

For me, that started with phoning the Georgia Parole Board and calling Governor Sonny Perdue on one of Troy’s scheduled execution dates. And a friend of Jesse’s works for Amnesty International, so I got in touch with him and ended up visiting Troy at the end of 2009 with Amnesty International and a member of Parliament.

There’s just something incredibly compelling about his case. Not just because I believe he’s 100 percent innocent, but also because I think it shows some of the flaws in a system that doesn’t really need to execute people. You have good prisons, and if somebody is deserving of staying in prison for the rest of their life, then it’s perfectly possible for that to happen. But if it turns out 50 years later that they were set up by someone else, you can release them—whereas if you’ve executed them, that’s not an option anymore.

Thanks for speaking with LAist, Richard!

2010年7月19日Kristi York Wooten与Tim访谈

The Stage and Screens Where It’s Just Me and Keane:

My Convo with Tim Rice-Oxley

来源：http://kristiyorkwooten.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/the-stage-and-screens-where-its-just-me-and-keane-a-convo-with-tim-rice-oxley/

July 19, 2010 by kristiyork

Welcome to my Keane story … If you weren’t directed here from Huffington Post, to read my review of Night Train and blog about Keane’s tour. Below, my interview with Tim Rice-Oxley, the band’s keyboard guy and Ivor Novello award-winning songwriter.

Hey Tim! I’m extremely sad that Keane isn’t coming to Atlanta on this tour.

Tim Rice Oxley: We haven’t been there in awhile now. We would love to come back. We need to spend more time in the States.

Here, people think of Keane as being a quintessentially British band.

TRO: We’ve always had a feel that America has embraced Keane from very early on. I’m a great lover of America. I keep saying I’m going to move there. I haven’t yet plucked up the courage … but one day.

Is it true you do a lot of traveling by train?

TRO: Yeah, we try to. We haven’t always done things that way. When we started touring, we kind of flew everywhere like everyone does. None of us enjoy the process of flying. It seems to be getting ever more miserable to go through an airport these days. When we were recording Perfect Symmetry, we’d had enough of flying, but we wanted to go to Berlin to record, and we ended up getting the overnight train to Berlin. It was such a revelation and a great bonding experience — the four of us taking off on this little adventure in the middle of the night, sitting in the bar and watching the towns of Europe go by. It really opened our eyes. You have this sense of real travel, one that’s been lost in the last 50 years since cheap air travel became the default mode of getting anywhere.

How did traveling around in trains inspire you as a songwriter? It must have, since you called the new record Night Train.

TRO: I’ve always had a love of trains. There’s a song called “Try Again” on our second album that has quite a bit of train imagery. The whole Night Train concept was borne out of a sense of adventure. That spirit came to represent that whole period of our lives last year, just kind of traveling around the world playing in support of Perfect Symmetry. Those are probably some of our happiest moments are when we were jumping on board a train in Europe or Russia or Japan or even in the States. When traveling’s such a big part of your life and you make a little change like that, it makes a huge difference.

Why is Night Train an EP? There are 9 songs.

TRO: It was a chaotic process. The whole concept of the EP came from that spirit of unplanned willingness to embrace the unknown. We were out on tour. We were in Boston, and we realized we had 3 or 4 songs that were finished but didn’t seem to fit anywhere; they didn’t feel like we wanted to save them another two years until a proper Keane record was finished. Those were the two K’Naan collaborations and “My Shadow,” and we had the idea of doing a cover of this 1980′s Japanese pop song. There was a sense of fun, and rather than saying we’ve got to stick to the plan that everyone does of a record every two years, and it’s gotta be 12 songs and it’s gotta be promoted up to the eyeballs. We got sort of carried away with it and before we knew it, we had 9 tracks. I like that, because we’re giving people more than you wouldn’t expect from and EP. I’m pleased to have that stuff out there, and it’s become much more of an event – if that’s not too pretentious a word – than we’d ever planned. It’s dong amazingly well over here in the UK. It’s been really cool.

How did you connect with rapper, K’Naan?

TRO: I know Tom was a fan of his first record, and he got me into it. We heard he was a Keane fan. So I called him up and he’s a lovely guy – very relaxed, very enthusiastic. I sent him some ideas and he loved them. The next thing we were in the studio in London and three days later we had some completely new songs, which is unusual for an English indie band.

Both K’Naan songs are great. I love “Stop for a Minute,” but “Looking Back,” with that great allusion to the Rocky theme song, is brill.

TRO: We could have certainly overthought that. It’s very much kind of in the hip-hop spirit, sampling a great hook like that. In the world of hip-hop it’s not at all unusual and pretty much a standard way of working up an idea for a song. For an indie band, it’s unheard of. Having taken the step to do that, it felt so fun and so exciting to hear. I think we felt really proud that we had the guts to do it.

Was working with producer Jon Brion really influential on you, because your sound changed around the time of Perfect Symmetry. Did you guys have a lot of the ideas of how you wanted that record to sound before you got together?

TRO: We had some building blocks, but we didn’t have the confidence to make that leap into the unknown. I guess we were worried whether we were capable of making a record that was much more eletcro – it’s very different record than the first two. With Jon Brion, having someone we respected so much and someone who had made such brilliant music come and encourage us … he was very honest about what we had done so far. He had this attitude of ” You can try whatever you want, bearing in mind if it doesn’t work, you can just delete it.” That sounds obvious, but it’s quite hard to have that spirit of being willing to make a fool of yourself in the studio. If you really do try stuff that’s uncomfortable, sometimes you just sound like an idiot at the end of it. But he gave us the confidence to realize that’s part of the fun of making a record. That’s why the great albums are as exciting as they are , because there’s a spirit of willingness to make a fool of yourself in the studio in search of those moments of inspiration.

Tell me about some of your influences, especially as the piano player.

TRO: Piano was the instrument I started out on as a child, but one of the things that made our band quite unique is that most of my influences were guitarists or electronic music like Depeche Mode or Kraftwerk, or a lot of that 1980s stuff … people like The Pet Shop Boys, and U2 and REM and Radiohead and Bowie – classic bands – people who are known for being more generally about guitars. I guess I took that sense of that kind of expansive, melodic guitar parts and used it. Rather than being about twiddly solos, it’s much more about creating sonic landscapes for the vocals and lyrics to fit into – a kind of impressionistic approach to sound. I think taking that inspiration and applying it to a piano is probably what made Keane’s sound unique. It’s a pretty bastardized approach to playing piano that would probably be disapproved of by anyone who’s been classically trained. I think it made for quite interesting results.

What about your activist work? You’ve done a lot of work with War Child, Make Poverty History, and you played Live 8. Does everybody in the band feel strongly about being involved in those kind of things?

TRO: Fans and musicians have always been so divided about whether music and politics, for want of a better word, should mix. I’ve never really understood that. I think a lot of the best music comes from a spirit of wanting to make the world a better place. There’s always room for a good old love story in pop music. But that in itself comes from wanting to make the world a better place. When I was growing up, U2 were the band who influenced me the most. Even now, 20 some odd years later, I still pretty much hero worship them. I remember seeing Bono onstage and finding the stuff that he was saying much more eye opening and inspirational and stirring than anything I was seeing on the 9 o’clock news on the BBC. As a teenager, it was something I could connect to, much more than what the gray-haired guy on the TV from the House of Commons was saying. I’ve always felt that if you’re given that stage, you have an amazing power to do good. I’ve never understood why people look down on that. War Child especially, we’ve had a relatively longstanding relationship with. If you can just turn up and play music and somehow actually do some good, it’s pretty easy to do that.

How does it feel to be back on the road again?

TRO: We’re the best we’ve ever been as a live band. We’ve just finished a UK tour with a lot of outdoor shows. We’ve really grown in confidence. The fact that the EP – – something that was thrown together pretty loosely and pretty quickly — went to number 1 over here [in England] gave us a real injection of confidence. And all of the sudden we have a few more crowd favorites in our catalog than we had a few months ago. We normally have a little acoustic section in our show, too. I think Tom is the best frontman on the planet now. I really want people to see that. I hope anyone who comes to see us has a really amazing night, because we’re not happy unless they do.