pencil

London newcomers pencil announce their signing to Moshi Moshi Records (Anna Meredith, Du Blonde, Girl Ray) and share tantalising debut track ‘The Giant’, out today (October 11th). 

Marshalled by bandleader Kamran Khan (aka Fake Laugh), pencil marks the beginning of a whole new project for the enigmatic musician as they become the first act from Moshi Moshi’s relaunched Singles Club (which has previously delivered releases from Florence & The Machine, Friendly Fires, The Drums, Lykke Li & more). The quintet are also now primed to unleash their live show this autumn with a full UK tour support run alongside The Japanese House. 

It took a year of experimentation to craft pencil’s self professed "dusty" sound, during which time the band’s influences were amassed via a mammoth 10 hour playlist. Instead of the heavier sounds that the band first pondered, it was the likes of Yo La Tengo, XTC and Pinback that came to the fore. 

All the while, Khan put down the electric and picked up an acoustic, as the wonderfully dexterous drummer Thomas Fiquet (Swim Deep) switched from sticks to brushes to play alongside Dom Potts’ hypnotic bass. Then, Cai Burns (ex-Kagoule) moved  down from Nottingham, adding a crucial texture as lead guitarist. 

The puzzle was complete when violinist Coco Inman became the band’s final member. A performer with such esteemed groups as the Philharmonia Orchestra and with contributions to projects from Max Richter and Arctic Monkeys, Inman is an ensemble player at the top of her game – and the band’s ace in the hole. This essential convergence of styles and sounds can be found on the band’s debut effort, a vivid introduction of what’s to come from the five-piece. 

Over the last year, pencil have built up a reputation as an unmissable live act with packed performances at this year’s The Great Escape and Green Man festivals. The band are now ready to share their first recorded offering via the new Moshi Moshi Singles Club.

Speaking ahead of its release, the band explained: “‘The Giant’ is a song about the pain of growth - growing up, growing apart, growing old. It started life with Coco’s violin. The whirlpool arpeggio immediately caught our ears and we started figuring out a chord sequence for the verse together. The idea sat as a voice memo for a few days before one rare morning, when all the lyrics were written in one sitting. We then arranged the song as a band before recording it live with Polly Mackey aka Artschool Girlfriend at Goldsmiths University.” 

pencil’s ’The Giant’ is out now via Moshi Moshi Records and available on all digital platforms. 

pencil are Coco Inman (violin), Dom Potts (bass), Kamran Khan (acoustic guitar + vocals), Thomas Fiquet (drums), Cai Burns (electric guitar + vocals)

For frontman Kamran Khan, the pencil is the ultimate creative tool. It can be sharpened, snapped in half, or kept pristine to erase old stories and create new ones. The band explain about The Giant: "The Giant" is a song about the pain of growth - growing up, growing apart, growing old. It started life with Coco’s violin. The whirlpool arpeggio immediately caught our ears and we started figuring out a chord sequence for the verse together. The idea sat as a voice memo for a few days before one rare morning, when all the lyrics were written in one sitting. We then arranged the song as a band before recording it live with Polly Mackey (aka Artschool Girlfriend) at Goldsmiths University. On the video, director Luke Ainger says: “After first hearing The Giant, I was really interested by the idea of making something that had the tone of an old children’s fable. Something which seemed nostalgic, magical, whilst maintaining the slight sinister feeling that often accompanies classic children’s tales. My day job is in film development/processing, so I was keen to see how we could push this tone through the film’s texture. Rik Burnel and I chose to shoot on Double-X (one of the oldest film stocks still in use) and pushed it by 2 stops during development, creating this unusual and dream-like sentimentality.”