To Kill A King

We are nowhere without songwriters, without someone able to put words and ideas, images and melodies together to better explain where we are and where we could be.

Bearing that in mind, youll want to meet To Kill A King and their magnificent songwriter, Ralph Pellymounter. To Kill A King are a quite extraordinary band who have the quiet, powerful reserve of The National or even Red House Painters, but its a reserve mixed with a liquid, rhythmical, joyous touch that recalls Arcade Fire, or the raw, euphoric drive of Mumford And Sons. The startling part of it all though is that at any one moment, they can sound like all or none of them. Their songs are lyrically dense; they explore complicated emotional landscapes, yet they remain direct and harmonically simple. To Kill A King maybe the longed-for answer to that terrible question, What sort of music do you like? Best of all, theyve only just begun.

Ralph began playing solo gigs in late 2004 while studying Popular Music at Leeds University. It was there that he met bass-player Josh Platman, who was studying Classical Music. As undergraduates are meant to do they got talking about Bob Dylan and a bond was quickly formed. The pair picked up players along the way and developed into a huge, horn-driven party band called Kid iD who played all the time, at every party going. We had elements of world music and ska in there, but we were definitely a student band, says Ian. Later they moved into a house together and set up their instruments in the basement. A great deal of music was made and carried on being made when their courses had finished and they all got jobs as teaching assistants and NHS temps.

Ralph went to work with people suffering from various debilitating addictions. He left when a client hed worked with for some time was arrested for pulling a breadknife on a stranger. No one had even told me hed been arrested four times already, he says, still a little alarmed. I didnt much want to be knifed.

In the autumn of 2008 the band moved to London and their sound began to change. Ian, who had been playing trombone, began playing electric guitar, an instrument theyd never really used before.

We got a bit darker and heavier, Ralph says. We were ready to move on.

Their old drummer returned to the family farm in Norfolk and an old school friend of Ians, Jon Willoughby known as Serious Jon Willoughby due to his deadpan demeanor was hired to take his place. If you ever get the chance, do ask Jon about his time spent playing with a Kenyan reggae band. Ben Jackson was brought in to play keyboards (He hates the word synths, Josh says. Makes him think of Hoxton) and by the end of 2009, a whole new band had been created, one that sounded quite unlike any other previous line-up.

In early 2010 they became To Kill A King. Its from a line in Hamlet, Ralph says. I liked the idea of Claudius killing King Hamlet by pouring poison into his ear and how that relates to music.

Band names are hard, Josh says. We thought about Sell Your Legs for a while A year ago the band made a video for Cold Skin and they recorded the single Fictional State. Almost immediately there were management and record labels getting in touch. The band stopped gigging relentlessly so each one, when it happened, became an event.