LONDON singer-songwriter and producer Barnaby Keen brings a little languorous neo-psych sunshine into our lives with his second single as just himself, “Trust Me”, out now on all digital streaming platforms.
The tune has a vitamin-D psych-soul bliss that puts him out in the same territory as maybe Lewis Recordings’ lovely Skinshape and !K7’s James Alexander Bright and according to Barnaby started life as a melody that his partner would hum when he was living in Eastern Europe.
“Years later I was living in a [London] church with an old Hammond organ in it,” he recounts. “And that melody came back to me. I took part of it and then wrote the song remembering her and our time together.”
After morphing through several incarnations, including a duet, Barnaby arrived at the old maxim, simple is best: “I ended up doing the most simple, stripped-back arrangement and in the end that’s what fitted.”
Barnaby hails from Dorset, like the two artists mentioned above; maybe there’s a case for a Dorset chill microscene in the land of the apple cake and the chalk ridges – but he’s been based in the southside of the capital for a decade now; his musical tastes and chops roam freely across the landscape of genres, having been a founding member of Moroccan electronic gnawa band Electric Jalaba, who landed a deal with STRUT Records; fronting dub-influenced indie outfit Flying Ibex.
The tune is out via Peckham’s new Plum Cuts label, headed by producer/engineer Oli Barton-Wood, who’s worked with Porridge Radio, Nilüfer Yanya, and Mellah.
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