When: 7.30pm on Saturday 20 February 2016
Where: The Deaf Institute, 135 Grosvenor Street, Manchester M1 7HE
PLEASE NOTE: This show has now sold out! Please follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to our mailing list above, for details of future C Duncan shows in Manchester
We’re excited to be bringing Mercury Prize nominee C Duncan back to Manchester!
Glasgow’s prodigious young talent C Duncan returns following the release of his acclaimed Architect LP with a special limited edition 7”. The new single comprises a brand new re-write of his debut single For (featured on Architect) and a French language re-recording of previous single Here to There, now titled Ici à Là.
Support for C Duncan has crossed the board of major platforms. Lauren Laverne, Shaun Keaveny, Huw Stephens, Radcliffe and Maconie, and Steve Lamacq are firm fans, and The Guardian, NME, The Sunday Times, The Line of Best Fit, The Quietus, DIY Magazine, Stereogum, Les Inrockuptibles (among plenty of others) have all featured Christopher’s music. Previous single Garden earned a place on BBC 6 Music’s A-list, and with his live band Christopher has performed sessions for Lauren Laverne, Vic Galloway, Ricky Ross, John Kennedy at XFM, Clive Anderson’s Loose Ends and several more. Belle & Sebastian invited Christopher to open at their Somerset House show on the album’s release date.
A graduate of music composition from Glasgow’s Royal Conservatoire, this new arrangement of For evidences Christopher’s considerable abilities not only as pop songwriter but also as a gifted academic musician. Effortlessly, the track is adapted from a winsome and pretty shanty into an irresistible choral collage of Beach Boys expanse, its rhythms shifted to accent a driving 4/4 and its ended lifted in glorious vocal harmonies. On the b-side, Ici à Là unexpectedly takes on a Serge Gainsbourg quality, an entirely different personality from the original track.
Christopher is the son of two classical musicians, but was drawn so persuasively to indie and alternative music and playing in school bands as a teen that he added guitar, bass guitar and drums to his existing repertoire of viola and piano, studying all five instruments at the same time.
Christopher wrote and recorded his album alone in his Glasgow flat on a bedroom studio setup, gradually adding each layer and each instrument one at a time, building up the breadth of the pieces. Though time-consuming, the process allowed for Christopher to lovingly assemble the intricacies and subtleties for this astonishingly intricate and subtle collection of music.
The cover art for the new arrangement of For, a detailed and stylised aerial view of Glasgow, was created by Christopher himself. A skilled and accomplished artist, his work has been exhibited at galleries around Scotland.
‘Hauntingly pretty, intricately arranged… Will blow you away with its awed atmosphere and reverential sense of rapture… Exquisite and unearthly’ – The Guardian (Band of the Week)
Tour support comes from Tom Low, who will release his debut EP in January via Deltasonic.
PLEASE NOTE: This show has now sold out! Please follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to our mailing list above, for details of future C Duncan shows in Manchester
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