MANCHESTER: Hey! Manchester @ SOUP

Thursday 31st May, 2018

7:00pm

Event information

Charles Watson – the London based songwriter/producer and member of indie duo Slow Club and garage-rock super group The Surfing Magazines – announces the release of his debut solo record Now That I’m A River on 18 May via Moshi Moshi Records.

To mark the announcement, Watson is streaming Abandoned Buick, the second track to be taken from the album following the release of the BBC 6 Music playlisted No Fanfare. Abandoned Buick came about through a chance introduction to a Yamaha YC30. ‘The band Mates of State left a Yamaha YC30 at the Moshi Moshi Records HQ a few years ago and somehow I’ve ended up babysitting the thing,’ explains Watson on the making of the track. ‘I love this thing so much. The fuzz setting through a Fender amp is basically the most pleasing sounding thing I’ve ever heard. That’s what does the riff on Abandoned Buick. Thanks Mates of State, please don’t come back for it.’

Not only is this Watson’s solo debut but it also marks his first foray into production. Exploring his relationship with traditional harmony singing, Watson worked with sampled versions of his own voice to create unusual vocal textures.

A former writing student of Central St Martins and The Faber Academy, Watson uses his own fiction writing as a spring board for his lyrics, a method he has also used for his previous records. The new album takes inspiration from the reoccurring themes and language of the JG Ballard novel Hello America. Now That I’m A River was co-produced by Watson with longtime collaborator David Glover at Tesla Studios in Sheffield and features a hand-picked band, including Guillemot’s Fyfe Dangerfield and Hot Club De Paris’ Paul Rafferty. Rozi Plain and members of The Deep Throat Choir and Trashkit also make an appearance on the album’s title track.

Tour support comes from Sivu. Under the name Sivu, British singer/songwriter James Page writes and records sophisticated, often darkly toned indie pop. Born in St. Ives, Cambridgeshire, Page spent his teenage years playing bass in indie and punk bands, eventually moving to London to expand his musical horizons. Influenced by pop mavericks like Björk and Beck, he had already begun to work quietly on solo material when in 2011, he crossed paths with Alt-J’s producer Charlie Andrew. The two struck up a friendship and began working together, recording Sivu’s debut single, Better Man Than He. The release of a 2013 EP called I Lost Myself as well as a handful of other singles drew comparisons to artists like Wild Beasts, Gotye, and Alt-J, the latter of whom recruited Page for a guest spot on their 2014 album This Is All Yours. His debut album, Something on High, arrived in September 2014 – and he followed up in July 2017 with second long-player, Sweet Sweet Silent.

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