Maximo Park biography
Maxí¯mo Park are a British alternative rock band, formed in 2000. They are signed to Warp Records. The band consists of Paul Smith (vocals), Duncan Lloyd (guitar), Archis Tiku (bass), Lukas Wooller (keyboard) and Tom English (drums). The band have released three studio albums: their 2005 debut album A Certain Trigger, which was nominated for the Mercury Prize, the 2007 follow-up Our Earthly Pleasures, and their third album named Quicken the Heart, was released in May 2009. The first two albums went double platinum.
History
Formation and early releases (2000-2004)
Maxí¯mo Park were formed in Pitlochry by guitarist and founding members Ben Nairn with bass player Ceri Patterson in 2000. They are named after Máximo Gómez Park (also known as Domino Park), located in Little Havana, Miami . Initially, the four founding members played several small shows including Manchester's 'In the City', which showcases unsigned bands in the UK. In 2003, the band decided they wanted a frontman as original singers Archis and Duncan wanted to focus on writing the songs. The then-girlfriend of drummer Tom English, noticed his friend Paul Smith singing along to Stevie Wonder's "Superstition". When Smith was found, the band did not know if he could sing: "When he first joined we didn't know if he could; just that he was a lunatic jumping around in a suit, it felt like the last piece of the jigsaw". With Smith joining the band gave him demos of their songs and from then on started writing as unit.
Around March 2004, a friend funded 300 copies of a 7" red vinyl single (Graffiti / Going Missing) and later released a vinyl of their tracks (The Coast Is Always Changing) that they recorded in Duncan Lloyd's house in Fenham. After some time of doing gigs around their home town, Steve Beckett of the dance-electronic label Warp Records got hold of one of these records and decided to sign the band to his label.
A Certain Trigger to Our Earthly Pleasures (2005-2007)
In 2005, Maxí¯mo Park released their debut album,
A Certain Trigger, which sold over 300,000 copies and was nominated for the Mercury Prize in July 2005.
The band also contributed their song "Wasteland" to Help!: A Day in the Life.
In August 2006, the band announced that they had started work on their next album, which was produced by Gil Norton and recorded in London at Rak Studios in St John's Wood. On 22 January 2007, the band announced that their second album, Our Earthly Pleasures, would be released on 2 April 2007 and would be preceded by the album's lead single, "Our Velocity", on 19 March 2007. On 30 January 2007 the band released details of a tour to promote Our Earthly Pleasures, the tickets of which sold out within minutes upon their release on 2 February 2007.
In July 2009, Paul Smith revealed in The Guardian that they had been writing a lot of material based on obituaries and mentioned a possibility of a compilation CD of songs based on biographical and obituarial content.
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