Dancing in the Dark

Introduction (Bedroom edition)

This is the first track that we ever collaborated on. It began life back in Newcastle during the first UK lockdown and was born out an old SM57 and barely working audio interface (both borrowed). Life was enclosed, but this song intended to capture the comfort I felt from this enclosure - whereby the tranquility I found in streets being empty combined with that feeling of possibility the summer usually offers.

Life Enclosed (EP Version)

After a summer of chasing something which was never meant, the excitement of returning to Birmingham in late 2020 was overshadowed by disappointment.

For You I Was All Over attempts to encompass the feeling of fulfilling an endeavor which was once anticipated with great excitement, but in practice ends up being something you never imagined.

For You I Was All Over

Beyond the fact we wrote because I have a handpan. And we want to try a cinematic soundscape in emotive expression that feels isolated yet strangely relatable.

Going Forward In Reverse

Took a long time to finish which may seem surprising since the song essentially has two parts. It began life when Chee Man came to Newcastle during the 2020 Christmas lockdown where he gave some much needed love to a dusty, unused piano. It took until summer 2021 to finalize the track and Epic Reopen’s dramatic and hopeful ending captures the way the UK animated itself with ignorance that the pandemic was over.

Epic Reopen

As you grow older it becomes harder and harder to make new friends. When you combine this with the mobility that many professional careers demand of people and the uprooting this leads to every few years, the job of finding solid social networks becomes even harder. This is the context in which the origins of this project are lodged.

We both moved to Birmingham to begin our PhD research in late 2019-early 2020 and met because of our shared love of Nils Frahm and eagerness to explore Birmingham’s music scene (in other words we both had no friends!).

Late 2020, after I had the luxury of moving back to my parents' house in Newcastle whilst Chee Man groveled in student accommodation, we moved into a flat together and into a second lockdown.

In attempt to stave off boredom and insanity during this period, we began to make lot’s of strange, ambient noises which we never thought would see the light of day. We grew increasingly attached to these noises and decided to spend the next six months arranging them into the EP ‘Dancing in the Dark’.

As Chee Man comes from a background of sound design and I from a more ‘traditional’, instrument driven background, much of the first six months involved negotiating how to write songs given our very different approaches. Following this we spent another six months thinking about how we could play them live and this is where we are today. 
Expect many more tunes that, I dare say, will be slightly less Avant Garde, have a greater sense of structure, and ultimately reflect the fact that we are no longer locked up inside.

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