Fyfe

Fyfe will release his much-anticipated debut album, ‘Control’, on March 9 via Believe Recordings. The video to forthcoming single ‘Holding On’ premieres today, and is due November 24 (with support across Radio 1 – Zane Lowe, Huw Stephens, Annie Mac, Phil & Alice – 6Music and XFM). Having again topped Hype Machine, supported SOHN and played a string of sold-out shows as part of Communion’s New Faces tour, Fyfe has today announced an eight date headline tour in early 2015, including London Electrowerkz on March 25.

‘Control’ is a collection of brooding, expertly-crafted alternative pop songs, from an artist and producer who has already earned fans as diverse as London Grammar to Childish Gambino (plus over 3 million Soundcloud plays). For 24-year-old Paul Dixon, it’s a record which may have started as an exercise in tightening one’s grip on life, but is effectively about release. A prodigal young talent, Fyfe’s childhood was spent playing in youth orchestras, before his older brother ordered that he listen to cooler music and gave him a Logic set-up. Whilst studying Economics at university, Fyfe shifted from classical compositions - though a quietly symphonic grandeur still characterises ‘Control’ - to writing his own songs under the alias of David’s Lyre. Suddenly the two worlds collided and something had to give: halfway through his course he dropped out and signed to Mercury Records. Despite a wave of acclaim, Dixon became stuck within the major label infrastructure, lost momentum, and ended up right back where he started- though this time around, things were going to be different. 

It was the appropriately-isolated sounds of ‘Solace’ which formed the blueprint of ‘Control’. Primarily a meditation on depression, Dixon emailed ‘Solace’ and just a picture of the back of his paint-streaked head by way of biography to a dozen music sites: without a PR, manager or any label in place, he watched it morph into one of the most-blogged hits of the year. Written and entirely self-produced by Fyfe, subsequent album ‘Control’ feels as inspired by the 90s hip-hop beats of Dixon’s childhood as the delicate pop of The XX, via the swelling orchestral arrangements of Bjork’s ‘Volta’: all held together by Fyfe’s near-falsetto vocal croon. 

Older, wiser, but still just 24, Fyfe’s debut album is a journey of self-discovery from an artist and producer who has picked himself up and come back stronger. A pop record with a working brain and a beating heart, ‘Control’ is the sound of an artist seizing back the reigns and then letting them go, turning his paint-smeared, back-to-camera to face forwards – looking right at you, and into the future.