From his carefully retuned guitars to his fuzzily warbled voice, Ben Howard is a man who enjoys bending sounds to his will. Even his first attempts at making music came from a desire to invent new songs, rather than blamming out Wonderwall for his schoolmates. Mind you, as both parents had filled his head with startling folk inventions from restless songwriters like Joni Mitchell and John Martyn from an early age, maybe it was always going to be this way.
Having abandoned his dreams of journalism to concentrate on music, Ben built his following around Cornwall and Devon, gigging wherever he could amid like-minded singer-songwriters. Having released his first EP in 2008, record company interest was not slow in coming, and his arresting debut album Every Kingdom was even nominated for the 2012 Mercury Prize (the same year he charmed the pigeons from the rooftops at the Radio 1's Hackney Weekend), and helped him secure two BRIT Awards. The follow-up I Forget Where We Were was released in August 2014.
Oh, and if you鈥檝e never heard his artful Live Lounge deconstruction of Carly Rae Jepson鈥檚 Call Me Maybe from a couple of years back, get thee to YouTube, and quickly.
From his carefully retuned guitars to his fuzzily warbled voice, Ben Howard is a man who enjoys bending sounds to his will. Even his first attempts at making music came from a desire to invent new songs, rather than blamming out Wonderwall for his schoolmates. Mind you, as both parents had filled his head with startling folk inventions from restless songwriters like Joni Mitchell and John Martyn from an early age, maybe it was always going to be this way.
Having abandoned his dreams of journalism to concentrate on music, Ben built his following around Cornwall and Devon, gigging wherever he could amid like-minded singer-songwriters. Having released his first EP in 2008, record company interest was not slow in coming, and his arresting debut album Every Kingdom was even nominated for the 2012 Mercury Prize (the same year he charmed the pigeons from the rooftops at the Radio 1's Hackney Weekend), and helped him secure two BRIT Awards. The follow-up I Forget Where We Were was released in August 2014.
Oh, and if you鈥檝e never heard his artful Live Lounge deconstruction of Carly Rae Jepson鈥檚 Call Me Maybe from a couple of years back, get thee to YouTube, and quickly.
