Broken Hands
Turbulence

Dale Norton – vocals
Callum Norton - drums
Thomas Ford - bass
Jamie Darby – guitar
Dave Hardstone – keyboards / lights

Flight. It’s a human obsession: flight as escape, flight as transcendence, as the ultimate transgression from earth’ gravitational pull. It’s certainly an obsession with aeronautic rock outfit Broken Hands, whose debut album I is a soaring conceptual work about flight in its many forms. Literal flight, yes, but internal forms of flight too – from life, mediocrity, normality. Flight as a means to escape mind and body. Flight towards the sky, the universe...towards greatness.

Humans are not meant to take to the skies and the cosmos beyond but Broken Hands do just that over eleven dark-hued, electrified tracks of space-rock trips high on throbbing, tumescent riffola. Recorded in a variety of studios and produced by Tom Dalgety (Royal Blood, Band Of Skulls, Killing Joke) it’s a perfectly-realised debut. Here the new-psyche of Temples collides with the superfuzz melodic rush of Queens Of The Stone Age or perhaps The Verve at their early, wigged-out best. ‘Turbulence’ offers a dark rough-and-tumble rumble of riffs while the blazing ‘Meteor’ hints at what Black Sabbath might have sounded like had they been produced by Joe Meek. A track such as the epic ‘W.T.L.L’ meanwhile is cut from the same dark three-quarter length cloth of Echo & The Bunnymen. But ultimately this is all Broken Hands, far more a greater sum than their parts.

Like the secret spawn of Hawkwind covertly dropped from an overhead silver machine that split the skies one dark night, Broken Hands formed a half decade ago while teenagers, having grown up in various Kentish towns (brothers Dale and Callum Norton in Faversham). Though in close proximity to Canterbury, a place that has historically produced an inordinate amount of musical pioneers – Robert Wyatt and Soft Machine, Gong, Kevin Ayers - at first the quintet’s mission was unclear and they flailed around doing what it is that normal bands do: writing songs, playing gigs. Listening and learning. They took in live rock albums from the golden period of 1967-1973. They absorbed Detroit House music. Had a Dark Side Of The Moon phase. They fell for Portishead, Massive Attack and whole lot of classic hip-hop.

It soon became apparent however that Broken Hands were not, and have never desired to be, normal. They are star-gazers with their sonic six-string phasers set to stun. They built a fan-base, were produced by Edwyn Collins. They played SXSW and a BBC Introducing slot at Reading/Leeds. They generated a certain amount of industry excitement, supporting the likes of Rolling Stones and Black Sabbath along the way, yet faced with an uncertain future and – even worse – the possibility of creative mediocrity they very nearly split up.

But then: an epiphany! In Gatwick airport of all places. Terminal 4 to be exact. It was here while dropping a friend off that singer Dale Norton had a realisation: everyone he knew was journeying elsewhere. Friends and girlfriend were fleeing England for foreign climes, while other bedroom-dwelling associates were travelling inwards on voyages of narcotically-propelled self-discovery. Broken Hands however were faffing about writing songs they didn’t believe in. They were going precisely nowhere – and fast.

Where others see chain-store coffee outlets and Duty Free shops, in that moment of clarity Dale saw the future. Here in this strange over-light unreality of travelators, transience and suitcases on wheels – of foreign tongues and fleeting human exchanges – there opened up a new world of possibility. The airport and its planes became a metaphor for life itself.

“As this ran through my head I was hearing the jet engines soaring into the sky from Gatwick's runways,” says singer Norton. “They sounded just like fuzzed-out guitar feedback and festival sound drums crashing. Then came more images: planes taking off and people coming up. Turbulence and Paranoia. Engines charging and pupils dilating...”

Flight became the new goal, then - an obsession, a theme. With a whooshing sound not unlike a departing 737, Broken Hands’ third, fourth and fifth eyes were flung open and Dale knew precisely what is was they needed to do: move in together, cover the walls with tin-foil and get to work on creating an album. “It was a proper Aerosmith, tears-in-rehab moment,” says Dale. “It was cards-on-the-table time. I went back and told the guys that I knew none of us were happy with what we had been doing and there had been no direction there. But I also said I knew what we needed to do. The next week we were offered a house in which to live communally – and suddenly just as we were about to split, a whole new set of songs ideas were created.”

The band’s end-of-terrace house sits in the small Kent village of Littlebourne, four miles east of Canterbury and it was here that Turbulence was born. Though not quite offering the bucolic back-to-the-land existence of their early 1970s forefathers who were out “get it together in the country”, the village does have neighbours sympathetic to the Broken Hands cause. There has only been anonymous noise complaint so far.

With the addition of keyboardist / lighting man Dave Hardstone, Broken Hands have evolved into an immersive experience. They have interpreted their frontman’s visions, and distilled their collective influences - rhythm and blues, stoner rock, trip-hop, psyche – into the sound of their debut. Silver too has became a theme, the ambience of the band’s jam-room became like that of a landing pod (or a drug farm), with the foil reflecting back 80% of their body heat. The energy the band produced fed upon itself and the music only became evermore turbo-charged.

“Copies of the albums have been passed around, taken abroad, become the soundtrack to people’s lives,” says Dale. “We long ago decided that’s what we wanted to be – that band. The one who people our age – our generation - take with them, who define a time in your life. Equally we’re happy with being the band who people lose themselves to.”●

For more information, please contact Cami Opere or Carla Sacks at Sacks & Co., 212.741.1000.