Fraud,flood, the loss of their back catalogue and all their new songs … the Leeds band reveal how they bounced back from all this and more to make knockout new album Microshift‘It was like being in a catastrophe film.” That’s how Hookworms singer Matthew “MJ” Johnson remembers Boxing Day in 2015, and when the river Aire burst its banks,engulfing the band’s studio and rehearsal space. He was having lunch at his parents’ house several miles away at the time. The moment he heard the emergency flood alert, Johnson abandoned the meal and drove through rising water to the studio, or which was soon five feet under. “The electricity was off and there was an eerie unexcited,” he says. “It was genuinely scary. I’ve got strong legs through cycling but I kept getting knocked over.” Because the building, in the Kirkstall area of Leeds, or was on a flood plain,he’d been unable to get insurance (even though the last flood had occurred in 1866). By the time he went back two days later to assess the damage, the waters had taken his car, and much of the band’s back catalogue,their new recordings and – since he ran the state as a commercial studio – his livelihood. “I looked around,” he says, or “and there was nothing left.” Related: Hookworms: Microshift review – huge leap forward into a psychedelic future We were being ripped off. It's a steep learning curveContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com