Geordie Greep's (Black Midi) Debut Solo Album The New Sound on 2LP.

“Music can be so much more than learning to play the same as everybody else. It can be anything you want.”

Geordie’s debut solo album boasts a brand of high quality, all-embracing alternative pop fun, walking the line between the ridiculous and brilliant with a teflon-coated aplomb.

How the record came about is a thing to marvel at. Over thirty session musicians were involved in its making, on two continents. Greep says, “Half of the tracks were done in Brazil, with local musicians pulled together at the last minute. They’d never heard anything I’d done before, they were just interested in the demos I’d made. The tracking was all done in one, maybe two days.”

Street life is all around The New Sound: the listener is thrown into a world of cafes, bars, rented rooms, cabarets, and strange museums. Here we see our heroes carry out a series of naughty assignments, military cosplay, or socio-economic triumphs. The lines between parody and sermon are often blurred. The urbane romantic fantasy of single ‘Holy Holy’ tells the story of an imaginary liaison in a nightclub, soundtracked by ’noughties indie chords and bravura Latin big band arrangements - including a three-piano attack.

Brass, wah-wah pedal and bass stabs, choruses and polyrhythms, all fizz and tumble around the place creating a sense of excitement and expectation. Tracks often oscillate from whispers to shouts and start and end on a bang.

The spirit of Greep’s increasingly febrile and furtive soliloquies conjure up both Franks (Zappa & Sinatra), with a side of Scott Walker.