Evil Action

Franz Ferdinand have shared a collection of new album tracks, live performances and remixes on a covermount CD free with this week’s issue of NME, available on September 18. The eight-track CD features a number of songs from the band’s new album ‘Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action’ as performed live at London’s Konk studios, plus extended mixes of both ‘Evil Eye’ and ‘Stand On the Horizon’ by producer Todd Terje and a Daft Punk remix of the band’s breakthrough hit, ‘Take Me Out’. Speaking to NME, Alex Kapranos said: “We wanted to put together a CD that represents the different sides of the band. It’s got the sound we’ve have been making in the studio recently on ‘Right Action’ and ‘Love Illumination’. It’s also got two extended mixes that we did with Todd Terje, and they take the rhythmic or ‘dance’ side of the band a little bit further. That was a good, fun collaboration and I think both of those mixes work really well. Then we wanted to get the live side of the band because when we made ‘Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action’ one of our principles was that at the core of every song there should be a live performance: just the four of us in a room playing together.” He added: “Some of my favourite records are just that, like ‘Down By The Jetty’ by Dr Feelgood or ‘Hatful Of Hollow’ by The Smiths. That’s a good example, because even though there’s a lot of songs on that that crossover with The Smiths’ first album, I much prefer the slightly rougher versions on ‘Hatful Of Hollow’. There’s something about the spontaneity of the live session that you never quite get on an album recording. We recorded at Konk, which is Ray Davies’ studio in north London. It’s a good bit of British music [history] so it was a cool place to hang out.”