Nick Mulvey, world citizen

In 2014, Nick Mulvey launched his solo career with the album First Mind, after having stood out as a member of Portico Quartet (a bizarre but highly acclaimed jazz group) from 2008 to 2011. This first work showed off his talent for songwriting, in which folk seemed to take a major position, all be it a rather unique sort of folk (like that of John Martyn or Nick Drake) which we haven’t seen in the music sphere for a long time. It’s an atypical pop, almost like repetitive minimalism (think Glass), that sometimes dares to diverge away from western music (Mulvey has long studied music, notably Havana). The result was bewildering, striking, and quite simply beautiful…

Three years later, we find a Nick Mulvey even hungrier for polyphony. We travel through Wake Up Now (which was released on 8th September 2017) as if we are leafing through an atlas. The South American and African influences never clash with each other, instead coming together rather subtly to destabilise the more pop or folk-like structures of his compositions. Colourful songs that cover a range of topics from the refugee crisis to the more simple ‘joie de vivre’.

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