Cairo Knife Fight
/By Wal Reid
Nick Gaffaney possesses all the traits of your typical rock musician, long hair, decked out in the traditional colour black with a sprig of class provided by his glass of vodka lime & bitters.
Nick's band Cairo Knife Fight have just released their new EP The Isolator, it's a seamless recording process that apparently was quicker than most home births. It might surprise people to hear that this EP was basically recorded in a day and then mixed the next day, the guts of it -
Nick Gaffaney - We had two singles from the record that had already been released so we needed three more songs. We went to Melbourne with a guitarist I'd never met, and into a studio and wrote basically two songs recorded three in a day and mixed the next day and banged them out there, and actually it worked surprisingly so.
Unheard of, really that quickly?
That quickly, and we didn't have any time there was no alternative so that's how it had to happen and sometimes that's the best thing.
Follow up tour?
I assume so, we'll knock this out of the way, I think the records coming in April or something then we hit the road play everywhere we can, the accolades come the White House invitations you know all that kind of stuff.
Let's talk about your new music video for Rezlord (R18). Full nudity, guy gets killed in a bath, no skimping on the nudie bits...
Yeah, that was a departure for us. Actually in some way all our videos up to that point we've made have been confrontational in some way or another. We'd done the 'Violence of Action' which was all about that area of violence and this one we decided we wanted to do something a little different... kind of take the shackles off our director because he does all our videos. We said "what can you come up with?" and he sent back that treatment, and I remember reading it going "You wanna do what?" (Laughs). I made a decision this year that I never want to be in another music video again, because I hate doing them. I can't really complain when someone comes back with an option like that instead. "You don't want to be in it ok, what we're going to do is get this amazing performance artist to drown a guy in a bath. That's a compromise I'm willing to get behind.
I love it, it's theatrical, cinematic, disturbing.
It's beautiful, in so many ways, he shot it in a really beautiful way and she is an incredible performance artist. I don't know if anyone has seen Hannah's stuff - she's constantly performing all over the country doing burlesque things. Over recent times seen her do some horror based performance art pieces, she's exceptional. There wasn't anybody who could've done that role that I know. The song works with it as well.
With the advent of short film festivals popping up everywhere, will we see CKF's Rezlord entered?
I never heard of any people doing that until another one that Hannah did for somebody, I can‘t remember the name. It was a NZ artist that's been winning all these awards at film festivals. I don't think we've peaked yet on our videos like we haven't really done that many, I would love to be making for the next record when we release singles there to be videos that really kind of reinvent the process for us a little bit. Absolutely film festivals, everything we can and push them out there. And some videos are works of art that's what we'd like to achieve.
How did the band name come about?
It's the story that nobody ever believes man. Long story short, because it is a long story. I met a guy who was a fighter pilot in the 2nd World War. It was years ago and I met him in an airport departure lounge. We were chatting chatting chatting and eventually was telling me he was a cargo pilot out of Cairo and doing a lot of midnight flights for whatever reason. He was in a bar and a fight broke out around him and he said to himself "There's no way I'm going to die in a Cairo knife fight, I'm getting out of here". I heard that and I wrote it down in my book, I didn't think anything of it and a few years later I had a band to put a name to and I thought that's an incredible phrase. I never considered it was a great name but I needed a name. I'll call it something but it's a talking point with people, people ask that question all the time and that's a good thing.
How was playing with Shihad?
That Shihad tour was amazing. Every time we get to play with them I hope it's not the end. You don't go supporting people forever so if this was the last gig we do with them then that's fine, those gigs were amazing. Next is to release this record and more touring - we're going to SXSW Austin Texas so I've got to get home and find myself a guitarist based out of L.A. There's a few guys yeah, I haven't played with any of them yet so I head home on the 7th of Feb and get straight into it. Then we make another record towards the end of the year, hopefully I'll be able to collaborate with the same people I was before, guys in L.A, plus the dudes back here. I'm hoping we could maybe do all do a band camp thing where we all get together for a month and just smash out a record that would be amazing, rather than the elongated process that this record was.
What do you think of the EP?
I'm really proud of it it's a stepping stone to the album. It was interesting to have the record finished ready to go and then go back and make an EP which was an interesting process, so we got to play some B-sides that didn't make the record. Not necessarily strong songs but they have a lot more room for jamming and just kind of left-field ideas. It's a great idea to release them so people that are into that side of the band can listen to those ones too.
I wonder how long the R18 classification stays on that video?
Yeah maybe we can make one that's R21?