Singer-songwriter Oliver Downes is thrilled to launch his debut album 'Ultraviolet' with an intimate evening of acoustic song at the Wesley Anne.
Created following a hugely successful Pozible campaign, ‘Ultraviolet’ is a lush cut of richly orchestrated indie finesse, offering a sweet blend of dreamy ballads and exhilaratingly kinetic tunes, featuring the talents of Holly Downes (double bass) and Chris Stone (violin) of art-folk trio The String Contingent, who will join him on the night.
Traversing territory charted by artists like Ben Caplan and The Dirty Three, ‘Ultraviolet’ trips the space between instantly familiar chamber pop and the experimental margins of folk, charting a musical passage through the darkness into the light.
‘[Downes’] compositions and arrangements create nebulous, ethereal soundscapes, deftly woven by the tensile orchestration… Give your mind permission to wander' (The Music).
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Jess Locke has been known to make people waltz, cry and fall asleep. While the obvious comparisons have frequently been made with Cat Power, Laura Marling and Elliott Smith, these artists are a point of departure for her, rather than an end to be matched.
Stylistically, Locke's work could be called folk, anti-folk, pop, indie, acoustic or lo-fi. However, it's her skill as a songwriter and her understated yet intense live performance that makes her a notable artist.
Both lyrically and sonically, Locke oscillates between feelings of fundamental loneliness and humble connectivity, between sublime and mundane pleasures, between big words and profanity.
