The biggest group in the land...

Every young band wants to say they're the biggest group in the land. The Author, though, didn't just mooch around making jealous eyes at their Razorlight posters. They got up and did it. Before you reach for the nearest tabloid and make a flick to the gossip pages thinking you've missed a trick, though, we'd best explain.

The Author are, right now, the biggest band on the Channel Islands - specifically, Jersey, an island five miles by nine miles not far from the coast of France. From this offshore base, these five young men spent the last twelve months holed up like revolutionaries-in-waiting, uploading fresh demos of rowdy, electronics-spattered synth-punk to their MySpace, and occasionally emerging to blow the roof off of Jersey's two - yeah, two - nightclubs, or make a swift sortie to the British mainland. The Author as we know them now came into being just over a year ago, following a show with The Automatic at Fort Regent leisure centre so rowdy it culminated with a back-stage food fight. "It was then that we realised that most of that jangly indie stuff, we were pretty bored of it," says vocalist/guitarist Christian Silver. "It didn't get the crowd moving enough, so let's take a new slant on things and see what we can mix together." Solidifying as a five-piece - that is Chris, co-frontman and fellow songwriter James Dolan, bassist Jonny Knight, synth player Sam Falles, and drummer Justin Vooles - the band chose not to mope about the lack of a scene on their tiny island, but to set out and build one from the ground up. "If anything, the lack of a music scene has just made us try harder," laughs Chris. "But since we've started there's been a few other young Jersey bands who've bought synthesisers and started making this new dance-stroke-guitar music," adds Jim. "And that's great. It makes it feel like people are really listening." And events would seem to bear that out.

Links
The Author MySpace website

Way back in May, The Author found their way onto MySpace's Best Of MySpace podcast, and shortly after, some tracks found their way out to Steve Lamacq, who heard the visceral guitar, high-octane tempo, and whooshing synthesiser and invited them to Maida Vale to record a session, which prompted him to hail them the first of the new "post-Klaxons" wave. Which brings us rather neatly to The Author's long awaited debut single 'Taxi'. Like the evil twin of 'From Atlantis To Interzone', it's a mix of sparking guitars, speedy drums and whooshing synth that's like being high on petrol fumes - but listen closer, because in between those searing choruses and zipping electronics, there's a minor-key edge that sounds stranded, set adrift. The band explain it's all about that love/hate feeling you have for your hometown. "The scenery's really beautiful in Jersey, and the people are really cool," says Jim. "But it's a place where people can get stuck, never experience new things. People are brought up here, get jobs, spend the rest of their lives here, and just sort of sleepwalk their way through life. So with 'Taxi', we thought we'd write something really mental and hectic, to try to shake people out of that." And what now? Well, ironically, it seems 'Taxi' might just be their ticket out of there. With the single primed to drop and an album cooking, The Author now have their sights on London. "We've gone as far as any band from Jersey can," says Jim. "Now it's time to get our message to the masses." "Yeah," agrees Chris. "It's world domination for us now." The choice is yours, then. Either you hail 'Taxi' as a new fast lane for forward-thinking British indie, or you'll be getting the night bus home.