Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian

FOLK rock duo Turin Brakes talk to the Recorder ahead of their acoustic gig at Canary Wharf on Wednesday.

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CELEBRATED folk rock duo Turin Brakes - Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian – play an acoustic gig at Canary Wharf on Wednesday and will be joined by regular sessionists, drummer Rob Allum, 40, from Wanstead, and Eddie Myer, 39, from Brighton.

Olly told the Recorder: “It’s great having the boys with us for the live shows. And the gig is a local one for Rob in particular. He lives just down the road and loves his cricket. He is captain of Chigwell Cricket Club, I believe, and is always telling us how they’ve won the league for two years running.”

He said: “I guess you could argue we are essentially an acoustic outfit anyway, so this won’t be much more stripped down than we normally do. Rob and Eddie sing as well, so at points there are four harmonies, which really adds to the show.”

Meanwhile, Turin Brakes have been building for the future.

Much of the money they have made over the years, from the likes of their Mercury Music Prize-nominated debut The Optimist in 2001, and its two Top 40 singles, Underdog (Save Me) and Emergency 72, and 2004 follow-up Ether Song, and the No 5 single from that, Pain Killer, has been invested in their Brixton studio.

Olly says: “We both engineer and produce all our own records, and we want it to be affordable for lots of new bands who can’t pay to go into a decent studio to make a record.

“We’ll have a friend based there as in-house engineer, and as well as hopefully being of great use to other acts, if it’s a success, it will help Turin Brakes continue in the long-term too.”

And it’s also time to re-evaluate Turin Brakes once more, as they did time and again with third album, Jackindabox, in 2005, the fourth, Dark on Fire, in 2007 and their last, this year, Outbursts.

“It’s always been a bit difficult for the public and media to pin our sound down, as it has been for us, but we have a pop sensibility and like choruses, so it will always be accessible.”

The gig at will be at East Winter Garden in Bank Street.