Andrew Knightley is not in a hurry. That much becomes clear pretty quickly. He speaks with the measured calm of someone who has learned – through years of London noise and relentless momentum – that the best work comes when you slow down enough to actually hear yourself think.

A few years ago, he made a decision that a lot of musicians talk about but very few actually follow through on. He left London, moved to the Chiltern Hills, built a studio, and started writing again – properly, without the churn. The red kites circling overhead gave his new band their name. The clearer headspace gave the music something it hadn’t quite had before.

AK & The Red Kites is a power trio – lean, direct, and built around a sound that sits somewhere between British blues-rock instinct and a deliberately modern, US-influenced production feel.

It is not what you might expect, and that is exactly the point. The band have been building quietly and now comes the moment they’ve been working toward: Hotter Than The Sun, their debut full-length LP.

Eleven tracks recorded with Canadian producer Mike Krompass, the album has been a long time coming – and Andrew will be the first to tell you that the waiting has been the hardest part.

We sat down with him to talk about the move out of London, the writing process, the vocal breakthrough that changed how he approaches the studio, and what it felt like when Slash came calling.

Getting Out of London

Ask Andrew about the album and he’ll get there – but ask him about the move from London to the Chilterns first and you start to understand where Hotter Than The Sun actually came from. It wasn’t just a change of address. It was a change of creative state.

“Moving away from London and having my own studio to write and demo in had a big impact on my craft,” he says. “Having a clearer headspace means this album is much more accomplished and rounded. The writing process became more organic, and I was having more fun – there was a real sense of freedom – and I think that shows.”

He’s careful to point out that Hotter Than The Sun isn’t a diary set to music. The Chilterns backdrop fed the writing without necessarily showing up literally in the lyrics – the landscape is more mood than subject matter. What it gave Andrew was space: space to be more deliberate, more considered, more himself.

It also gave him something practical – a studio of his own, where ideas could develop at their own pace without a clock running. Around 25 demos eventually became eleven tracks. That’s a brutal edit, and Andrew is honest about how those calls get made.

“Sometimes you have to make an editorial decision,” he says simply. Some of the cuts surfaced on the EP Proverbial Storm. Others, he’s quietly confident, will see the light eventually. “They were all good songs.”

Each of those eleven tracks that did make the cut, he says, has its own life and story – while still sitting as part of a wider picture. That balance between individual moments and overall journey was something he and Krompass thought about carefully. Getting the album’s structure right, Andrew says, took a lot of work. “A lot of thought went into that.”

“The writing process became more organic, and I was having more fun – there was a real sense of freedom – and I think that shows.”

Hotter Than The Sun covers a lot of ground without ever feeling scattered. The title track – which Andrew describes, accurately, as a wah pedal lover’s dream – is built for pure escapism: lust, witchy women, paradise, and a heap of trouble packed into four minutes of wide-screen rock.

“My head varies from day to day, so all the aspects manifest somehow,” he says. “I like the carefree, more fun songs – ultimately people enjoy that escapism. I love the wide-screen panoramic sound of that track. It tells a story and takes the listener on a journey.”

That energy sits alongside something like ‘Karmic Rituals’ – probably the heaviest track on the record, and one that goes to a very different place lyrically.

“Our own mind is an infinite well of possibility,” Andrew says. “You can get bogged down in the routine of daily life – always having things to do, places to be. I guess it’s really acknowledging these rituals that bind us to our outer existence, but there’s a whole world within.”

That one came quickly. Andrew was sitting in the garden with a notepad after Krompass asked him to write something with a bit of a Royal Blood vibe. “And this just came out.” It’s the kind of moment that tends to happen when a songwriter has the right environment around them.

The album closes with ‘Cosmic Train’ – the lead single – and the sequencing is deliberate. The concept Andrew and Krompass worked to was one of no filler: every track its own story, the whole thing flowing as a complete listen.

In 2026, saying out loud that you’ve made a record designed to be heard start to finish is a bold position in the age of singles dominating and attention spans dwindling.

“I think we got the best of both worlds,” Andrew says. “People can cherry-pick tracks or listen to the whole thing. But loads of people still love the album format – and we made it for them too.”

“I love the wide-screen panoramic sound of that track. It tells a story and takes the listener on a journey.”

Finding the Right Producer

The decision to work with Mike Krompass raised a few eyebrows. A multi-platinum Canadian producer with credits ranging from Steven Tyler to Smash Mouth to country artists isn’t the obvious pick for a British blues-rock trio from the Chilterns. Andrew is aware of how it looks. “Ha! Yeah – seems a bit random. But not really.”

He was introduced to Krompass by his manager Wes at O’Neill PR. The conversation that followed made it clear they were on the same page before a note was tracked.

“We share a similar musical vocabulary,” Andrew explains. “I wanted this record to have that big US kind of vibe. I didn’t want the album to sound like a blues rock record in the conventional sense – it has a modern production sound and that was intentional. Part of the blueprint for this band.” Krompass heard the demos and signed on.

The most significant thing Krompass brought wasn’t a production trick or a sonic signature – it was a shift in how Andrew approached his own vocals.

On past records he’d arrive at the studio and record without having really lived with the songs. “We all think we can just turn up and sing something and put in a performance,” he says. “What you find is it doesn’t always turn out the way you wanted if you don’t prepare properly.”

The change was simple but transformative. Andrew started singing the songs extensively at home before setting foot in the studio. The result is vocals that are, in his own words, much more him as a live singer than anything he’d recorded before. “It’s just an artistic maturity thing,” he says. “But yeah – really pleased with them.”

“I didn’t want the album to sound like a blues rock record in the conventional sense. It has a modern production sound and that was intentional.”

The Hardest Part

Making the record, Andrew says, was a genuinely good experience. The creative process, the sessions with Krompass, the songs taking shape – all of it felt right. But there is a part of this that nobody quite prepares you for, and it’s the part that comes after.

“It did take a long time to get everything mixed and mastered,” he admits. “And the waiting is always the bit that gets you.” For a self-critical artist – and Andrew is candid about that tendency – sitting with a finished record you can no longer touch is its own particular strain.

There’s always a voice, he says, that whispers ‘if only…’. “But overall, I’m really happy – and it’s a springboard for an even bigger album.”

Now that Hotter Than The Sun is finally being born into the world, the feeling is something closer to pride. And relief, probably, if he’d admit it.

“It did take a long time to get everything mixed and mastered – and the waiting is always the bit that gets you.”

When Slash Came Calling

There are validation moments in every artist’s career – the ones that arrive without warning and tell you that what you’re doing is landing somewhere beyond your immediate circle. For AK & The Red Kites, one of those moments came when Slash personally added ‘Stronger’ to his Spotify playlist.

“It was great to be added to that playlist out of the blue,” Andrew says. “It’s a proud moment and gives a sense of validation. I love ‘Stronger’ as a track, and it deserves to be on playlists like that.” A quarter of a million streams followed. For an independent act without label infrastructure behind them, that number means something real.

‘Stronger’ is the kind of track Andrew describes as his natural go-to – the hybrid picking riff, the big chorus, the song that arrived quickly because the instincts behind it are well-worn.

He wrote it over a day or two. “As a consequence, those ideas sometimes get taken for granted,” he says, with the self-awareness of someone who has clocked the irony. “I should write more ‘Strongers’ for sure.”

But he’s measured about what moments like that mean for the writing room. He writes big songs that can reach a wider audience, but he knows you can’t engineer that into a formula. “Every time I write a song it can feel like an uphill struggle. They change and evolve during the writing process, and you have to know when it’s ready.”

“I should write more ‘Strongers’ for sure.”

What Making It Actually Looks Like

AK & The Red Kites are an independent act. The debut album arrives with 100 limited edition vinyl copies. There is no label safety net, no major promo machine. What there is, instead, is a songwriter who has made exactly the record he wanted to make and a band with a clear sense of where they want to go with it.

The ambitions are real – America, big tours, festivals. But Andrew is measured about the path. “In reality, filling out smaller venues and getting some support slots with bigger acts will be our focus in the short term,” he says, “and then recording another album and seeing what we can do when that comes along.” In the streaming era, he notes, trajectories can shift fast. “If a few songs blow up and go viral you can be doing the big shows before you know it – so who knows?”

There’s something grounded about the way Andrew talks about all of this. No grand pronouncements, no industry-speak. He is not the kind of artist who mistakes confidence for certainty – he knows the streaming era is unpredictable, that a song can take off or disappear without warning, that independent acts live and die by moments they can’t entirely control.

What he can control is the quality of the work, and on that front, he’s done everything he can.

He left a city that was making too much noise. He found a place where the air was clearer and the kites flew overhead and the ideas came more freely. He built a studio, wrote dozens of songs, made the brutal calls about which eleven deserved to be heard, and found a producer who understood exactly the sound he was chasing.

He prepared his vocals like he never had before and made a record that, for all the self-critical voices that come with the territory, he genuinely loves.

That question – what do you want someone to feel the first time they put this on – tends to reveal something true about an artist. Some reach for legacy. Some talk about influence. Andrew Knightley doesn’t hesitate. “Escape from the stresses of modern life,” he says. “The feeling of being in a semi-isolated desert retreat – living their best life.”

It’s a surprisingly generous answer from someone who has put so much of himself into this record. He’s not asking for your admiration. He just wants to give you an hour where none of it – the noise, the pressure, the daily grind – gets in. If that’s what AK & The Red Kites can do for people, then Hotter Than The Sun has done exactly what it set out to.

“Escape from the stresses of modern life and the feeling of being in a semi-isolated desert retreat – living their best life.”

Hotter Than The Sun by AK & The Red Kites is released May 8, 2026 on all good platforms with CDs and 100 limited edition vinyl copies available from https://www.akandtheredkites.com/