Maxïmo Park

Maxïmo Park
Maxïmo Park at Radio 1's Big Weekend in 2005.
Background information
Origin	Newcastle upon Tyne, England
Genres	Indie rock, post-punk revival, alternative rock
Years active	2001 (2001)–present
Labels	V2, Beat, Warp, Hostees, Cooking Vinyl
Website	maximopark.com
Members	Paul Smith Duncan Lloyd Lukas Wooller Tom English
Past members	Archis Tiku

Maxïmo Park are an English alternative rock band, formed in 2000 in Newcastle upon Tyne. The band consists of Paul Smith (vocals), Duncan Lloyd (guitar), Lukas Wooller (keyboard) and Tom English (drums). The band have released five studio albums: A Certain Trigger (2005); Our Earthly Pleasures (2007), Quicken The Heart (2009), The National Health (2012) and Too Much Information (2014). A sixth, Risk To Exist, is slated for April 2017. The first two albums went gold in the UK and their debut was nominated for the Mercury Prize.

The band was created by guitarist Duncan Lloyd and is 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 the original singers, Archis and Duncan, wanted to focus on writing the songs. The then-girlfriend of the 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") which was recorded by Duncan Lloyd in his and Thomas English's flat in Fenham, Newcastle. The band's second release was a 7" single of their songs "The Coast Is Always Changing" and "The Night I Lost My Head", recorded by Paul Epworth. After some time of doing gigs around their home town, Steve Beckett of the dance-electronic label Warp Records acquired one of these records and decided to sign the band to his label after also seeing the band perform at the Notting Hill Arts Club hosted by Creation Records founder Alan McGee.