Cairo Knife Fight

Tooled up with an arsenal of drums, guitar, synth bass and loop pedals, Cairo Knife Fight pack a riff-driven punch that has seen them hold their own against the title holders they've shared stages with - names like Foo Fighters, Them Crooked Vultures and Queens of the Stone Age.

The collective back-story of drummer/main vocalist Nick Gaffaney and guitarist/loop guru Aaron Tokona reads like a brag sheet of some of New Zealand's finest musicians including Anika Moa, Fat Freddy's Drop and Dimmer, as well as Tokona's own former contenders, rock outfit Weta. It's as a duo however that they've blazed their very own trail, finding new ground between the power of Led Zeppelin and the fearlessness of Radiohead.

As rock's odd couple, Cairo Knife Fight make for an unhinged live proposition. By his own admission, Tokona is "emotional and mentally perturbed" while his band mate Gaffaney is "solid and mentally sound", and it's a dynamic reflected in their unhinged, seatof-the-pants performances. Tokona says it was a booze-soaked jam session at a Wellington bar that brought their unlikely partnership together and set the blueprint for what was to come.

"I was falling asleep after banging away at this gig for two hours. Nick came up and started thrashing away on the kit. He then looked up at me and yelled, "come on mate, bloody do something!" From that point on we became really good mates - he asked me to play guitar when the band was a seven-piece. That was it. Boom!"

That seven-strong incarnation was eventually refined to a two-man army of Gaffaney and Tokona, an economic line-up that Gaffaney says throws up challenges that have set the whole tone for Cairo Knife Fight's adventures in sound. "We discard ideas that don't work and move on easily without the bass player or second guitarist complaining their "awesome" part is not going to be heard. But also, if one of us says "this is shit", it's hard for the other to not fall down the rabbit hole too. With larger bands,there's room to be persuaded by the thoughts of others. Not here. It's facing the demon head-on and trying to wade through it."

Following the release of last year's self-titled EP plus an opportunity to kick out their jams at New York City's CMJ Music Festival, the duo returned to Auckland's Roundhead Studios in May to again work magic from a space that has captured the sound of much bigger bands. Cairo Knife Fight had little trouble filling up the channels of Roundhead's Neve desk, the console custom-built for The Who that has put albums like Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell and Jeff Buckley's Grace to tape. They returned from the sessions with II, a brand new EP that bottles their supercharged sound on four blistering cuts. As a first look on what's to come, II's first single "The Origin Of Slaves" rings out like a warning shot, all drum loops of death and buzz saw guitars sauced with slithering falsetto. "The first EP was just a taste," says Tokona. "This one sounds like we are on our way somewhere - we're taking more risks and we are way more fearless."

With II set to drop Monday 15th August on Liberation Music, this year will be a big one for the Christchurch-based duo. First up there's a nationwide tour with Head Like A Hole, plans for a brand new long player are in the works, and return tours of the US and Australia are in the pipeline.

Put your dukes up - Cairo Knife Fight take on all challengers in 2011.

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  The Origin Of Slaves

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Music Videos

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  Origin Of Slaves
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  The Violence Of Action