BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.4.3//EN TZID:Europe/London X-WR-TIMEZONE:Europe/London BEGIN:VEVENT UID:2745@scala.co.uk DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20261016T183000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20261016T214500 DTSTAMP:20260505T104657Z URL:https://scala.co.uk/events/the-clockworks/ SUMMARY:The Clockworks at Scala - Friday 16th October 2026 - 6:30 pm until 9:45 pm DESCRIPTION:Look up. Look around you. What do you see? A row of commuters\, lost in their phones. People in pubs looking at small screens\, sat under bigger screens. We were sold the possibility of infinite connection\, but all it really did was pull us further apart. Because in the modern world\ , there’s no more alluring temptress than technology and she’s rarely\ , truly on your side.\n\nWhen Galway-born\, London-based alternative quart et The Clockworks wrapped up touring for their debut album\, 2023’s ‘E xit Strategy’\, they concluded a game-changing period of their lives tha t was buoyed by a greater sense of community than ever. That record had ce mented the importance of their move to the capital. Not only had it led to them working with Bernard Butler on the album\, but it had also set off a domino chain of pinch-me events that saw them tick off support tours with some of their heroes. In 2022\, they were taken on the road in the US by Pixies\; last year\, they wrapped up a string of dates with Johnny Marr.\n \nThe latter was so enraptured by the band that he would wander around the venue corridors\, loudly singing their songs. “We were playing with the se people who are the reason we play music. It makes you feel like you've realised something that you always wanted to do as a musician: forming ban ds\, making albums\, being able to shake the hands of people who’ve mean t so much to you and tell them that\,” recalls Tom Freeman.\n\nIt was a monumental time for The Clockworks - completed by James McGregor\, Sean Co nnelly\, and Damian Greaney - but when they stepped back into the writing room\, they soon had the instinct to turn their focus elsewhere. The new m aterial that swiftly began pouring out of McGregor was rooted in a very cl ear and distinct world that looked outside of their creative bubble and sa w a society wrestling with an increasing isolation born from shiny new toy s and bright lights.\n\nThe framework of ‘The Entertainment’ came intu itively and fast. “We had this really strong identity for the album from the start\,” explains McGregor\, “which meant that we could then spen d so much time on the details. It’s like if you have all the beats of th e film\, then you can tell the actors to go and improv between them.” Th e Clockworks are calling their second record not so much a concept album a s - cleverly - “a work of friction”. “Friction is the best word beca use the whole album seems to be filled with push and pull\, black and whit e\,” continues Freeman. “There's such a conflict and contrast between everything. Even just recording the music\, we did it all separately and t hen put it back together.”\n\nIn stark contrast to their debut\, which h ad been laid down with Butler in a flurry of activity\, running on snap de cisions with no time to look back\, ‘The Entertainment’ was produced b y Sean Connelly\, recorded over a period of months and using almost meta t echniques to mirror the jarring conceits inside. “We had the idea to rec ord in a way that was in keeping with what the album is talking about\, an d to try and do it in isolation completely. We wanted creatively to turn i n and see what we could do without anyone looking at it\, as a trust fall exercise for the four of us\,” explains McGregor. Not only would the ban d eschew any outside voices\, they would also record their own parts in is olation. “So then when we did bring them all together\, the parts had al l this tension to play with\,” the frontman says.\n\nWith Freeman and Co nnelly having massively upscaled their production abilities in the years s ince ‘Exit Strategy’\, the band began slowly chiselling away at the ra ft of ideas they’d accumulated\, carving out a sonic landscape for ‘Th e Entertainment’ built around tension and release\; moments of darkness juxtaposed with glimmers of light. A raft of cinematic inspirations were o n the moodboard: Bladerunner\, Drive\, the works of Fellini. Setting the t one for a project steeped in “the sheen and slickness that slams against the ugliness and depravity of Hollywood”\, their influence was integral \, as evidenced by a trio of songs on the record - ‘La Dolce Vita’\, ‘The Magnificent Seven’ and ‘True Romance’ - named directly after films. When they were fine-tuning darkly anthemic recent single ‘Well We ll Wellness’\, meanwhile\, they played the demo alongside clips from The Bear. “We knew we were on to a winner because the song was sounding how we thought the show looked and felt\, and that’s a show about life and being human\,” says Freeman.\n\nMusically\, meanwhile\, nothing was off limits for the quartet. “Our first album was pretty much four lads in a room making noise\, but this album has so much piano\, synths\, string arr angements\, found sounds\, weird noises…” McGregor explains. “We gre w up with The Strokes and The Libertines\, but we have too much interest i n other things to contain ourselves to that.”\n\nAsk The Clockworks to l ist a fraction of their listening habits and they’ll reel off everything from Little Simz to Ennio Morricone to Beach House and AG Cook. ‘The En tertainment’’s rattling opening track ‘How To Exist’\, McGregor ex plains\, was influenced by the energy of Simz and Kendrick Lamar. A manife sto of sorts\, it transports the listener to the beginning of a journey th at slowly moves through headspaces and moods. The melancholy self-delusion of ‘Best Days’ details a relationship already doomed to fail\, while ‘La Dolce Vita’ begins with an opening image lifted directly from the 1960 Fellini film: “The floor is shaking and the walls are sticky / Some one said that Jesus took a chopper out the city”. “It sets up this ide a of the death of religion\, the death of values and what’s coming in to replace that\,” McGregor suggests.\n\nBy the album’s midway point\, w e’ve reached ‘The Magnificent Seven’\, a pulsing electronic highligh t that sounds like Franz Ferdinand covering Sleaford Mods. Its titular con cept is one of the record’s cleverest moments - a looping together of th e old Western classic and the modern West with its billionaire corporation s into one hellish whole. “I heard an economist mention The Magnificent Seven in reference to Apple and Microsoft and the big tech giants\,” McG regor explains. “In the film\, the cowboys are there to liberate the vil lage\, so the irony of the Big Seven companies and their messiah complexes [felt apt].”\n\nThroughout\, the instrumentation and production hones i n on this narrative. ‘How To Exist’ begins with “vocal production tr icks and a thousand instruments that could never be played exactly like th at by the four of us in a room”\; the final notes of ‘The Entertainmen t’’s title track were recorded live\, in one take\, with all the pops and background noise left in. “It’s not that we saw the light and in t he end\, you know\, you just have to sit with the guitar!” McGregor note s with a laugh\, but there’s a tangible point about finding real human c onnection that sits just below the surface.\n\nOn the record’s artwork\, the band are seated in a cinema screen\, replicating an old LIFE Magazine cover featuring the first theatre to show 3D films. Back then\, the techn ology seemed fantastical\; now\, we can see people putting a blinker aroun d their vision - the start of many to come. With their second\, The Clockw orks are highlighting that duality but they’re also offering a tangible reason to support the alternative: a group of mates\, making music to get you off a screen and into the world. That\, after all\, is really entertai nment. ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://scala.co.uk/s/wp-content/uploads/2026/02 /1-5-scaled-e1771952386196.jpg CATEGORIES:Live Music END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20260329T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR