Keane - Under the Iron Sea

In making this record, Keane tried to confront their worst fears, to ruthlessly scrutinize themselves, their relationships with each other, with other people, and with the world at large, and to make a journey into the darkest places they could find. It made for an incredibly intense atmosphere during the writing and recording of the album, and the resultant songs and sounds very much reflect that. In the songs they created a kind of sinister fairytale-world-gone-wrong, a feeling of confusion and numbness represented by a dark place under an impenetrable iron sea. To express all this they created entirely new sounds by putting an old electric piano and various analog synths through many different combinations of vintage guitar effects pedals, creating soundscapes that range from the percussive to vast oppressive walls of distortion.