This article was published in 2002.

Following their appearance this Wednesday alongside Capital State at The New Roscoe Leeds self-styled dark guitar rock exponents Xi have declared a moratorium on live shows to allow them to dedicate the next few months to writing a full B-list of songs for an album of all-new material to be released towards the end of next year. A principal production advisor in the project will be Simon Hinkler - guitarist with Leeds based "The Mission" in their glory days,

Daz, Xi's frontman and singer, explains:

"We've done more gigs this year than ever before, and we've loved it - especially the Easter tour and the recent 'micro-tour' - but what we've learned is that we can't give everything to live performance AND to songwriting at the same time. So - if we want to write a whole album's worth of new material we've got to back off gigs for a while"

The album project got under way this Autumn when Xi finished recording what were intended to be three new demo tracks to add to the critically acclaimed set they released earlier this year.

"We took the songs along to the studio for a pre-mastering session with Bruce Wood and he told us that there was no point in releasing them as we already had a perfectly good demo, and that the new songs were so strong that we should bank them towards an album!" Daz continues, and adds, "Of course we were flattered - but then we realised that, flattery aside, Bruce was right - making yet another three track demo was moving sideways, when the way we want to be moving is up!"

Then Simon Hinkler sent them a glowing personal review of their demo tracks - and expressed an interest in producing them if future circumstances permit.

Xi manager, Steve Kind, said:

"Simon won't be producing the album, as his current committments will keep him in New York - but he will be acting in an advisory capacity and will hear and comment on all the material as it is written. The fact that he is showing so much interest is a huge boost for the band"

In the meantime, you may hear a couple of the candidate tracks from the album at the New Roscoe on Wednesday - but after that, apart from a couple of late-February shows in the Midlands that are already booked. they won't be gigging again until their second Easter tour at the end of April 2003.