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WWW.ARKARNA.NET The momentum has been building for years, but now the time is finally ripe for Arkarna to emerge with a bang back onto the world's stage. Arkarna, An outfit so ahead of their time, that the svengali behind the project, precocious engineering prodigy Ollie Jacobs, has been spending years perfecting his craft, working with the likes with Leftfield (mixing their seminal album Leftism), The Prodigy and Madonna rather than having his own name in lights. His band first hit the scene in 1997 with the critically-acclaimed, platinum-selling debut album Fresh Meat, but after touring the world to thousands of fans, Ollie became disillusioned with the way major labels wanted to mould him, so went underground to make the kind of music that satisfied his soul - albeit for other artists. Fast-forward a decade, and Ollie finally found a collaborator to meet his exacting creative remit in his quest to re-launch the vision for the band. Step forward talented guitarist and songwriter Matt Hart. For the past three years, the pair have hunkered down in their north west London studio and now, they've finally completed the incendiary, ground-breaking album that they know will propel them to the forefront of today's music scene. Yes, Arkarna are back to claim their space on the dancefloor, moshpit and in discerning music lovers' record collections the planet over. No-one else sounds quite like Arkarna. When Ollie and Matt first met, it was electric - literally. Ollie, a programmer and singer, who's been a producer at his dad's Queen's Park studio Rollover since he was 14, was on the lookout for someone to take Arkarna's electro-pop sound to the next level. Then he met Matt, who left a lasting impression in more ways than one. A smalltown West Sussex boy with a big dream, Matt had studied music classically since his childhood, but recovering from a life-threatening bout of illness aged 15, he started playing rock guitar. Later, while studying a degree in music at the prestigious Goldsmiths University in London, he saw an ad for auditions at Rollover, and, ever ambitious, went for it. Arkarna have already made global inroads over the past few years, soundtracking Levis ads in the States and, right now, they're the sound of one of the biggest-selling alcoholic drinks in Russia. Arkarna's single So Little Time was also the theme tune to Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's TV show in the US of the same name. On top of that, track House On Fire has featured on legendary US comedy Friends, The OC and the soundtrack for movie Batman And Robin - more importantly, they've even been played on the caff stereo in EastEnders... Not only that, the catchy-as-swine-flu debut single from their new album has been mastered by the legendary Chris Gehringer from Sterling Sound, who's recently polished releases from the likes of Yeasayer, Rihanna, La Roux, Keisha and 3Oh!3. And that's before you even consider the video, which has been directed by promo geniuses DuckEye, who've previous made videos for the likes of The Fallout Trust, Zero 7, Sigur Ros, and Clayhill - It's set to be a fruity worldwide internet sensation! But back to the new album, and with a public appetite voracious for the likes of Pendulum and Muse, Arkarna's unique take on cinematic, BPM-savvy, electronic, stadium-friendly rock with killer melodies is perfectly timed to explode onto the dancefloors, festivals and arenas across the globe - as Matt explains, "We fall into and cross so many of the genres that are really popular now, but we've still got our own thing going on, we always have. We've got to be true to our sound." Get ready for the kind of musical therapy that only Arkarna can provide. Everybody needs it... [More] [Less] |
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