Tony Cummings pitched a batch of questions at West Midlands rock team NLIGHTEN.

NlighteN

NlighteN are a worship orientated rock band from the West Midlands who have been around a little while and whose latest CD 'In This Place' has received plenty of praise from the critics. The band have also just come back from a much praised gig at Greenbelt. Cross Rhythms recently took the chance to throw some questions at the band. Here are NlighteN's replies.

TC: Enlighten me about NlighteN.

Sarah Burrows: Tim and I were the first of us to join together playing music in our church. Chris came in as the guitarist and we formed the band. We needed a bass player so we recruited Dave, (Tim and Chris' brother). We played gigs at various churches with a changing line-up of other musicians. After playing for a bit, we recorded our first EP. So we started playing more of our own material and playing more gigs such as supporting Bottlerocket and our college CU. Tom joined us in June 2005. Since then we have played at universities (including Keele and Worcester), the Lee Sounds Unsigned competition and most recently playing with Onehundredhours and on Stage 2 at Greenbelt festival. The vision of the band has always been to glorify God in everything that we do, our aim is not only to strengthen Christians in their experience of God, through providing songs that they can relate to in their walk with God, but to also show non-Christians something of God in the songs that we play. We are now looking forward to what God has in store for us; hopefully bigger and better things are yet to come.

TC: Let's run down NlighteN's discography. Tell me something about 'The Uprising' (2004)

Chris Barton: For 'The Uprising' we wanted to create an atmosphere with the music, the introduction music was recorded using a school piano in a school hall. This gives some real character to the sound and set the theme for our first try at recording ourselves. The album was recorded in a time when we loved long instrumentals. We were also experimenting with instruments and sound which is always great; it is really a more worship genre album than we have done since. We recorded atmospheric sounds, Tim hitting the bed, the band all singing together. Anything that we thought would be interesting to try out on a record.

TC: What about 'A Signal' (2005)?

CB: When I first heard "Talk" by Coldplay, before the album was released, it made the hairs on my neck stand up. I remember the moment when I showed Tim and he instantly threw all the songs that he was working on away for being "too old". We started over writing new songs that had The Killers and Bloc Party as influences. 'A Signal' was born. We worked hard to get that new, fresh sound that we had just heard and searched for brand new samples and synthesisers that would give the outer-space sound. We put the album out as a small collection of songs, so as it turns out it was NlighteN's freshening up.

TC: 'In This Place' (2006).

CB: From the moment "Struggle" was written by Tim and we played it, we knew that it was going to shape the next album. We had got the complex synths, tons of echo delay, etc, out of our system on 'A Signal'. I wanted to try something just using clean guitar, no delays or fancy effects. Sarah also picked up this idea for keys and we kind of created the sound for "Struggle". The album really became a narrowing down of our sound, deciding that this was the kind of sound that we wanted people to associate with NlighteN, Christian indie rock.

TC: What would you say are the best three songs on 'In This Place'?

Tim Barton: The best song on the album would be "Struggle". This always reminds me of when we reached the final of the Lee Sounds Unsigned competition voted by NME judges and some other big magazines. I wanted to write a song that sounded like the newest, coolest unsigned band ever. This is why there is such a loud explosion of sound at the start. The song just ran from there really, one of those songs that writes itself. The words began as "Open your eyes" and developed into "open my eyes" as the song became more God-centred.

"Heart Of Mine" is probably my next favourite song. It is great live song which gives a lot of room for people jumping about and that sort of thing, which is always nice. It really started as an answer to a question posted by a fellow church goer, "Why can't we have more Christian bands like The Killers and cool music like that?" The song took shape as always to further my writing in modern music and not accepting the Christian sub-category we are always plagued with. The song just describes how I feel God all around me all the time, good times and bad, an opposite response to the first track "Struggle" really.

Another good track on the album is the title track. "In This Place" talks clearly about being able to come to God in this place, how God, despite his awesomeness, greatness and bigness, chooses to meet with us in this thing we call "praise and worship". The echoed guitars are really the best part of the song as Chris does tend to be the best guitarist in the world.

TC: Tell me about your church.

Dave Barton: We attend a church in the West Midlands called Amblecote Christian Centre. It's quite a large church. ACC is quite a modern church and we are all involved in the various activities that happen there. We are going through some changes of vision and focus, it is becoming more community focused and we are starting to move into the community finding out the needs and aiming to meet those needs.

TC: Have you written any songs yet for the next album?

TB: We are always writing. If there is one thing about NlighteN that I'm sure of, it is that we are never satisfied staying still. We always want to be better, sound better and do more. This is particularly the case in writing. We performed a new song at Greenbelt this year, "Where We Are", which went down really well with everyone, so I'm sure that this song will be on the next album. There's a demo of it on my space if anyone wants to check it out. www.myspace.com/nlighten