Following a sold-out three-week residency at State51 Factory, Fyfe Dangerfield, the founder and frontman of Guillemots, continues his resurgence as he shares his brand new single ‘The Zebra Wind’, which has just been premiered by Chris Hawkins at 6 Music. Both ‘The Zebra Wind’ and the recent track ‘Shook’ will feature on Fyfe Dangerfield’s upcoming “seven-tracker”, which will be released in May.
‘The Zebra Wind’ lands us on the tenderer side of the coin to the brasher, more visceral ‘Shook’; a blurry-eyed magic carpet ride through a vista of “honey monkeys” and “bubble-wrapping trees / beneath which snakes lie still unseen / aborting lovestruck tenancies”, with Fyfe’s languid vocals hovering intimately high over a rolling, slow-motion ghostband accompaniment. At least until – in the playful twists that flow so readily in Fyfe’s music – words alone fail, and the the baton is grapped by (possibly) an elf with a penchant for freestyle scat-singing.
Fyfe says, “With ‘Shook’, I was fully diving into the labyrinth of studio-world .. all these different sounds crossfading in & out .. but ‘The Zebra Wind’ is the complete opposite; I put down the roughest sketch for the music, just something to sing over, and then the vocal & lyrics fell out in one take, so I just ended up leaving it alone .. it bottled a very particular mood & moment in my life, so it felt right for the track to stay in its nightgown, rather than dress it up anymore .. ”
Both ‘The Zebra Wind’ and the upcoming seven-tracker will be released via Fyfe’s Channels May Change cottage industry. The record label component of the wider multimedia creative platform will allow Fyfe to release music entirely on his own terms, free from the pressures of deadlines, industry timelines, and commercial or even genre considerations. Any idea which fires up Fyfe’s imagination will have a home. His recent Birdwatcher broadcasts provide a flavour of what Channels May Change allows him to do, with original songs, sound collages, an assortment of unhinged characters, esoteric visuals & virtual tasting menus alchemising into a surreal radio show from the other side.
Recent weeks have seen Fyfe mark his return in a variety of ways, including a three-show live residency at the State 51 Factory, sharing a list of favourite tracks with The Line of Best Fit (where else will you see Richard Burton next to Deee-Lite?), and improvising football-themed songs in the style of Bob Dylan & Elvis Costello on Patrick Kielty’s 5 Live Show.
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