Former Blaenavon frontman Ben Gregory has announced his debut solo album, ‘Episode’.
Coming together during his recovery from a spell receiving treatment in psychiatric hospitals, the record was worked on alongside producer and old friend Blaine Harrison of Mystery Jets and engineer Matt Twaites.
Ben explains: “Everything on ‘Episode’ comes back to my struggle to interpret, or reinterpret, my life and its core relationships, after having my concept of reality revoked. This may sound dramatic, but it’s hard to know if you can trust how you feel about a partner, a situation, a future, when you’ve sat in a hospital bed, torn a newspaper to shreds, sat back and watched it put itself back together.”
Alongside the news comes a second single, ‘manifest*’, which you can check out below.
“manifest*’ is about feeling fated to certain situations and lacking control over your own position in life,” Ben explains. “It looks towards a potential future that is desired but unlikely, focused on a partner and an imagined future family. There are elements of a slightly tragic fixation in there. The narrative retelling is real but it questions itself and cannot commit to painting an impossible future. The attempt was to portray this process of recollection, because people choose how they shape their own memories.’”
‘Episode’ is set for release on 7th April via Transgressive.
The track listing reads:
storm of conversation
blue sea blue
((fall away ’till morn..))
manifest*
deathbed hangover
mother’s son
smoke
god bless you
