Saturday, February 20, 2010

Alex Kapranos reveals work has started on a Tonight follow-up

The Franz Ferdinand frontman has told 6 Music the band have been writing new material.

It's just over a year since their third studio album,
Tonight: Franz Ferdinand, was released on Domino.

He says he and guitarist Nick McCarthy have already started putting new ideas down for their fourth record, but he wouldn't give too much away at this stage.

"I've been round at Nick's and we've been writing some things, and trying to do things in a different way again," he said and laughed, "You'll hear it before too long."

But we couldn't prize much more information out of him: "Before the last record, I talked far too much about it as we had the ideas and I made a vow that I wasn't going to say anything about what we are actually doing until we've done it, and then wait about another three weeks."

In the meantime he's been keeping busy. One project included working with the Oscar-winning actress Marion Cotillard on a song called The Eyes Of Mars, for a fashion campaign.

"I've been round at Nick's and we've been writing some things, and trying to do things in a different way again."

Alex Kapranos

The band wrote the song, which is the soundtrack to an advert in which the Nine actress plays a woman who, by night, transforms herself into a sultry singer.

"That was kinda fun," explained Kapranos. "Working with her was totally different from anything I've done before. Really refreshingly, she was just into learning it and learning it. Guys in indie bands are the laziest you've ever met in your life. They go, 'Oh, we have to run through it a fourth time?'"

Franz Ferdinand were in London this week to present the Music Producers Guild Breakthrough Producer of The Year award to Paul Savage, the man behind the desk on their latest album.

In the coming weeks, the band are off on tour in Australia, with dates in South America after that.