Franz Ferdinand

Short Biography
The marquee of a theatre before a show.

It's music of the night: to fling yourself around your room to as you psyche yourself for an evening of hedonism, for the dance-floor, flirtation, for your desolate heart-stop, for losing it and loving losing it, for the chemical surge in your bloodstream. It's for that lonely hour gently rocking yourself, waiting for dawn and it all to be even again.

By the end of 2006 we were exhausted - physically, emotionally and creatively. We'd been in the studio or on the road for three years without a break and we needed one. Alex went to Vancouver with the Cribs, Paul raised a family, Bob made a film and Nick disappeared in South Am...

Short Biography
The marquee of a theatre before a show.

It's music of the night: to fling yourself around your room to as you psyche yourself for an evening of hedonism, for the dance-floor, flirtation, for your desolate heart-stop, for losing it and loving losing it, for the chemical surge in your bloodstream. It's for that lonely hour gently rocking yourself, waiting for dawn and it all to be even again.

By the end of 2006 we were exhausted - physically, emotionally and creatively. We'd been in the studio or on the road for three years without a break and we needed one. Alex went to Vancouver with the Cribs, Paul raised a family, Bob made a film and Nick disappeared in South America. We met up again in Glasgow a few months later, happy to be in each other's company and excited about creating something new.

Nick found a building for our HQ. He has a knack for it. It was a crumbling Victorian town hall, recently vacated by the drug rehabilitation unit that was the last tenant. The flock wallpaper was peeling a little and the psychedelic municipal carpet was browned with fifty years of council nicotine, but the vibe was great and the monthly rent was half the daily rate of a London studio. There was a noise complaint from the nearby home for the deaf after our first session, but after we blocked the windows with fibreglass and rockwall nobody knew we were there. Daylight disappeared and night became permanent. We didn't notice it, but the mood of the record began to form.

We started writing, but there wasn't a plan. There has never been a plan. As we wrote songs, we played them out at gigs - not huge gigs, but sweaty pub basements and social clubs, keeping it word of mouth and chaotic, giving the new music room to live or die. You don't realise what's good about a song until you play it to people. You also don't know if a song's crap until you play it to people. ‘Anyone In Love' died in the Captain's Rest, but Turn It On turned us on. ‘English Goodbye' died in the British Aluminium Club, Fort William, but Ulysses became something more than it was when we left Glasgow.

We spent a few days with Brian Higgins and his Xenomania team in Kent. We enjoyed the time and it was inspiring, but it became clear to both of us that we shouldn't make a record together. Our worlds are too different.

The HQ evolved into a studio with the help of Paul Savage. Paul was drummer of the Delgadoes and the engineer at Chem 19, the Chemikal Underground studio in Glasgow. We brought over an old Flickinger console that Bill Skibbe found for us in Michigan and Allen Johnston wired the rooms.

Then we met Dan Carey. He was perfect as a producer - a mad mixer, a chaotic experimenter. Recording with him is like breaking into a science lab with a mischievous brainbox who wants to see what we can blow up. We had a laugh.

Nick climbed into the rafters of the hall to hang a mic from a thirty foot cable which Dan swung across an amp kicked over and feeding back from Alex's guitar, so we could warp the sound with the Doppler effect of a passing racing car or a diving spitfire on What She Came For. A gaggle of obscure and long forgotten 70s synths were mobilised for the likes of Can't Stop Feeling & Lucid Dreams. Superslinkies hung from the ceiling as primitive spring reverb. Sometimes, on the likes of Live Alone, we'd go super hi-fi and tight in the dead room, then, on tracks like Send Him Away we'd rock out in the cellar under the stage, playing to one mic, so it sounded like it was just you and the band in the room when you played the tape back. We rattled human bones for percussion on No You Girls and sang into the darkness, nothing for company apart from the tingle on your spine and the ghosts of the Saturday night dancing.

Anyway, here it is. Tonight: Franz Ferdinand. You can listen to it quiet, but it's better loud. You can listen to it during the day, but it's better at night.

In-depth Biography
Glasgow's art-damaged rock quartet Franz Ferdinand -- named for the Austro-Hungarian Archduke whose murder sparked World War I -- features bassist Bob Hardy, guitarist Nick McCarthy, drummer Paul Thomson, and singer/guitarist Alex Kapranos. In late 2001, Kapranos and Hardy had begun working on music together when they met McCarthy, a classically trained pianist and double bass player who originally played drums for the group despite no prior experience as a drummer. The trio had been rehearsing at McCarthy's house for a while when they met and started playing with Thomson, a former drummer for the Yummy Fur who felt like playing guitar instead. Eventually, McCarthy and Thomson switched to guitar and drums, and the band switched practice spaces, stumbling upon an abandoned warehouse that they named the Chateau.

The Chateau became Franz Ferdinand's headquarters, where they rehearsed and held rave-like events incorporating music and art (Hardy graduated from the Glasgow School of Art, and Thomson also posed as a life model there). The bandmembers needed a new rehearsal space once their illicit art parties were discovered by the police, and they found one in a Victorian courthouse and jail. By summer 2002, they recorded an EP's worth of material that they intended to release themselves, but word of mouth about the band spread and Franz Ferdinand signed to Domino in the summer of 2003. The group's EP Darts of Pleasure, which led some to label Franz Ferdinand "the Scottish Interpol," was released that fall, and the band spent the rest of the year supporting groups such as Hot Hot Heat and Interpol. Franz Ferdinand's second single, Take Me Out, arrived in early 2004. The single propelled them to greater popularity in the U.K. and laid the groundwork for the band's debut album. Franz Ferdinand was released in February 2004 in the U.K. and a month later stateside. Franz Ferdinand's success followed them across the pond; "Take Me Out" became a sizeable modern rock hit, in part thanks to the song's cutting-edge video, which earned the Breakthrough Video award at that year's MTV Music Video Awards. The group's momentum continued with the release of the Michael single and their Mercury Prize win over such artists as the Streets, Basement Jaxx, and Keane. Franz Ferdinand released their second album, You Could Have It So Much Better in fall 2005. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide