INK.'s Todd Dorigo wrote this guest blog for us about the founding of the new group with Dougie Poynter & Corey Alexander and their debut EP 'HEAVEN'.
After a couple years of sporadic encounters in London, Dougie and I eventually found ourselves with guitars in hand, writing songs without any intention of forming a band. We wrote more and more frequently and 6 months later, we had a pool of cohesive and exciting demos which we’d recorded around the dining table. It wasn’t until then that we conceived the idea of forming a band and began to seek out our drummer who was recommended by a close friend.
The concept of INK. stemmed from an artist called Ralph Steadman. He begins his artwork with a random splat of Indian ink and out of that, he creates an illustration which couldn’t have been foreseen. This mirrors how the band formed and also how we write songs: starting with a simple musical idea and allowing the song to lead us to its natural conclusion.
The band is massaged by a plethora of different influences from artists like Nick Cave, The National and David Bowie, to authors like Vladimir Nabokov and Allen Ginsberg, to poets like John Cooper Clarke and Leonard Cohen. It’s quite a melting pot of inspiration but our main focus always begins with melody. Once we have found that, then our influences act accordingly.
We feel very attached to this EP as we really drew on personal experience when writing it. The mornings would almost feel like a therapy session and those caffeine fuelled rants would directly inform the writing. There is a thread of anxiety and a will for escapism which seems to have surfaced in our music and this was definitely new territory for us to express.
Now our debut EP, "HEAVEN" has been released, we are really excited to breath new life into the songs in the live arena. We’re looking forward to developing as a live band on the road and to begin to build bridges between INK. and its audience.