“This is so, so cool, it’s so much better than I remember the track from my childhood!” BBC Introducing, Jericho Keys

“The energy is infectious and exhilarating. I’m a fan of this track.”  Chillfiltr

“Charged with a real intensity… such an evocative sound.” Various Small Flames

“The orchestration is amazingly clever.” Alt77

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I’m delighted to announce the release of Sing a Song of Sixpence, a reimagined nursery rhyme fusing melodic pop with the avant-garde. It is the lead single from Maxim, my forthcoming album with No Spinoza. 

Maxim is a lockdown project born of the slow burn of remote collaboration and a shared passion for experimentation with musical heritage. Over the past 18 months or so, Thomas Pearson (No Spinoza) and I have whiled away many an hour shaping and reshaping fresh iterations of old childhood curiosities in our home studios. Various drafts have passed to and fro over the internet’s ether, allowing them to build up a palimpsest patina. The result is a series of 10 modern retellings of familiar tales, laced with urgent vibrancy and an underlying dark melancholy.

This particular track is an outlier of sorts. It finds its genesis in a concept album that No Spinoza was putting together about Canary Wharf some years ago. Tom’s bandmate Christopher Wright had left an old unfinished track in hibernation, but still pulsing with kinetic energy and blazing 80s synths. When Tom sent me the draft last year I could hear a re-rendering of the Sixpence lyrics scanning over the skittering rhythms. Tom wove in a riff incorporating the essence of the ‘original’ childhood rhyme amidst the pizzicato fizz.

It was a lot of fun finishing this up down at Echo Zoo Studios in Eastbourne with Dave Izumi Lynch over the summer. We were joined by the rhythmic behemoth Phil Wilkinson who added his own unmistakable flavour to the drums. And of course we had to layer up some of those beautiful old analogue Moog synths for the fluttering blackbird riffs at the close.

I hope you like it.