1. Thank you very much for your time! Before we introduce your new release to our readers – what kind of drink would you recommend to zip on while they listen to your new music?
If you really want to immerse in the sense of childhood naivety and wild abandon, I recommend a juice box of some kind or a ribena… however, an ice cold beer in the sun also works wonders for fans of more adult beverages.
2. Please give us an update about – new single, new album, tour dates, new videos?!
I just released a new single called Playtime, a warm, sunny indie-rock song that has been a joy to work on and listen back to over the summer. I am planning to follow this up with more songs and wrap them up into my first Coloured Paper Shapes album towards the end of the year.
We have a couple of gigs coming up too. One at Forty Coffee Bar in Tooting, London coming up on 16th October and a few more to be announced soon later in October and November.
3. We live in times of many conspiracy theories. Which, harmless, theory would you wish were true? (For example Dinos living inside Earth or E.T. living in a home in California)
While I have live in London a long time I grew up in South Manchester and when I was a kid we often used to drive out to this place in North Cheshire called Alderley Edge for a bit of outdoor time. There is a legend there that King Arthur and his army are in a magic induced sleep under the mountain there under Merlin’s protection, awaiting the day the world needs them to come back and defeat evil again. It would be cool if that one was true.
4. What fashion style or brand would best describe your music?
There is a brand called Wax London that make clothes I love to wear – including lots of vibrant colourful over-shirt jackets. I think an outlandish colourful overshirt is perfect because I like my music to have lots of different colours and tones and fuse genres together, but there is also often quite a loose and relaxed edge to it.
5. Tell us more about your songs! Topics! Message!?
Most of my songs write now are based around early-adulthood / mid-30s identity – and telling a narrative about a group of people struggling with who they want to be, their careers and there lifestyle and telling stories of how those things all come together during a tumultuous post-work night out in the city. They have London life at their heart and are loosely based around my own experiences going to a late night bar called Flamingos (which is no longer in existence but I am bringing back to life in the album name).
‘Playtime’ my newest track, started life separately to these songs as it was originally inspired by a group of kids from a film called ‘The Florida Project’ and how they helped each other to find a kind of innocent joy in there lives despite the tough circumstances they were growing up in. But when I got into it, I felt that theme could also be applied to that place or person in your adult life who helps you let go of troubles and embrace your inner child, which I think fits really well as part of that bigger narrative theme.
6. Beside music, do you have any special talents?
I am ok at tennis, not at a special talent level by any means but I love running around a court. I also have unnaturally percussive knuckles…
7. Name 5 things we all should know about you as an artist?!
- The name of my long term album project is called Flamingos – so listen out for that soon!
- My artist name ‘Coloured Paper Shapes’ is inspired by a phrase in the novel Normal People, by Sally Rooney, as I thought it was a cool way of describing how we see the world differently when we feel like a stranger in it
- I like to think I make music for extrospective introverts, so if you’re a thoughtful introvert at heart but you are always out and about socialising, people watching and taking the world in then I hope I have made something cool for you
- My ultimate music hero is David Bowie and inspired by him, I don’t like to be confined to one particular style or feel in the music I make, so don’t expect the next song to sound similar to the previous one!
- I’d love for my songs to be turned into a jukebox musical, or compose songs for a video game or film, so if anyone’s looking to collab, let me know!
8. The road so far…. who or what was your biggest support??
I have had a lot of support from friends and family along the way. My best mate Ben, who now lives in LA working as a film and tv editor, was huge in my early music making because he comes from a family of musicians and can play almost anything. Since starting Coloured Paper Shapes Matt James and Karl Read have been amazing support and band mates giving up their time to help me bring the songs to life live. I’d also like to shout out Big City Radio and Wayne Mosley who has played my songs on his radio show since the first track I released which has been an incredible support to what I do.
9. A question you’d like to answer, but never been asked in an interview before?! + Answer pls
A question I have never been asked is why do I play guitar backwards / upside down (which I do by the way). Well aside from being left handed, I did actually learn guitar upside down after my cousin gave me his old nylon string and a chord book. He didn’t know I was left handed so it was strung the wrong way round for me, but I didn’t know this and consequently I learned all the chords backwards without realising. I can now play the ‘right way up’ for a lefty, but I am much better playing with the string all reversed and the wrong way up. I have a big wood crate mural of Jimmy Hendrix in my house to commemorate the great man most famous for playing that back to front way.
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