Folklore

The freshest pop aficionado gracing the circuit. —Cameron Wright, NARC Magazine DILETTANTE Website A white-knuckle ride of gloriously tuneful 20-something angst. A jazzy, brassy paean to modern anxiety. (Dilettante) is a consummate multi-instrumentalist, making brilliantly extravagant art-pop soap operas. — Bob Fischer, Electronic Sound Magazine Dilettante is the brain-child of longtime BC Camplight member Francesca Pidgeon. Live shows are a genre-phobic loop-fest, featuring everything from fuzzy guitar licks to 5-part saxophone harmonies. Recently Dilettante have sold out headline shows in Manchester, Leeds, Halifax, London, Hull and Liverpool. They have supported the likes of Self Esteem, Caribou, Graham Coxon (Blur) and Philip Selway (Radiohead) plus festival appearances at Kendal Calling, Live at Leeds, Manchester Jazz Festival, Focus Wales and The Great Escape. Their debut album ‘Tantrum’ was released in October 2022. Some of the most beautiful and interesting art rock/pop instrumentation I’ve ever heard accompanied by stunning vocal harmonies front to back. Please give this a listen! — Miles Hadley, International Music Desk Dilettante’s set is an exceptional performance piece, an unreal amount of live layering. Francesca spits vocals with deft pronunciation; this level of art wouldn’t work with sunshine and smiles. Exceptional. — Damian Robinson, NARC Magazine For fans of St Vincent, tUnE-yArDs, Dirty Projectors and Fiona Apple. Benedict Benjamin Benedict Benjamin returns with his first album in four years, a set of songs about parental burnout, anxiety, love and care. The experience of the pandemic and of raising young children feature heavily across the collection from the worries of having kids in the shadow of an uncertain future (‘Furlough Blues’), to the challenge of remaining a strong parental presence while falling apart during lockdown (‘Hanging By A Thread’). On ‘Nursery’ Ben sings of the overwhelming exhaustion and vulnerability of parenthood ‘all of the guilt/that you feel daily/ that you’re failing in some way you can’t determine’, the anxiety of being the one in charge and not really knowing what you’re doing. While on ‘Sad Song’ he sings of trying to remain level headed as your child struggles ‘I know when you grow up, you’ll know your share of pain/ I learned a lot from mine and you’ll do the same’. In spite of the heartache the subjects of Ben’s songs work their way through the darkness and find a way to persevere. ‘Hanging By A Thread’ ends with the pledge ‘you look after me, I’m gonna do my best for you/ gonna summon all the grit that love can summon’. While ‘Despite’ serves as an anthem for ‘everyone carrying on/ Still finding the strength left to smile/ Still playing your part shrapnel lodged in your heart/ After trial after trial after trial…’ 2020 presented logistical as well as emotional challenges as lockdown deprived Ben of the band that had toured his second album Truant. Shorn of collaborators Ben adapted his process to these confines by sampling and looping drum solos from old jazz records and writing from there, a process that felt like a collaboration. ‘It forced me to write songs in rhythms I wouldn’t naturally initiate and it would bring out something that would bring out something else. So it was about following all those different new ideas and seeing where they led’. The result is a more rhymically varied and dynamic record with deep grooves propelling the songs forward with a jazz influenced looseness that marks a real stylistic shift, as for example in singles ‘Furlough Blues’ and White Noise. The album takes in a variety of influences from the psychedelic post punk of ‘Despite’, the open hearted folk of ‘Nursery’ and ‘Sad Song’ and the downbeat electronica of ‘Wonder How You Are’. Running alongside all of these changes of gear is the same direct lyrical vulnerability and honesty that has characterised all of Benedict Benjamin’s previous work, detailing the struggles of adult life and the will to carry on regardless. ‘Tunnel’ is released June 9th on Sugarcoat Records