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Frankmusik Album Signings

• 29th Jul 2009

Frankmusik release debut album 'Complete Me' on 3rd August. Album signings are as follows:

Monday 3 August- Liverpool and Manchester

1.00pm – live & signing HMV Liverpool Bold St – 24-26 Bold Street, Liverpool, L1 4DS

5.00pm – live & signing Fopp Manchester – 19 Brown Street, Manchester, M2 1DA

Tuesday 4 August – Milton Keynes and Brighton

12.00pm – live & signing HMV Milton Keynes – 78 Midsummer Arcade, Milton Keynes, MK9 3BB

5.00pm – live & signing HMV Brighton Churchill – 48-50, Churchill Square Shopping Centre, Brighton, BN1 2RG

Wednesday 5 August – Norwich

5.00pm – live & signing HMV Norwich – 21 Gentlemans Walk, Norwich, NR2 1NA

Thursday 6 August – London

7.00pm – live in the mall + signing in store HMV Westfield – Unit 2062/2063, Westfield London Shopping Centre, Ariel Way, London, W12 7GF

In 2009 Frankmusik is that rarest of pop prospects; one that has manufactured his own image and music. ‘Complete Me’ is an auteur’s album, a break-up record written about one girl. While his contemporaries use one producer for one track, one writer for another and end up with a hotch-potch of borrowed sentiments and a patchwork of production sounds, Vincent wrote and produced these tracks in his bedroom in Thornton Heath, Croydon. The album is an electronic love letter to an X – the soundtrack to an eternal summer of adolescent heartache, equal parts light and dark.

From the first crashing waves of digital fuzz that kick off album opener ‘In Step’ it’s clear that Frankmusik is no retro-futurist. This isn’t 1984’s future-vision. It’s a closer cousin to the laptop techno of The Field with the experimental vim of chipcore. The commercial album will come with a second CD on which Vincent has remixed and re-edited all his own songs into a deeper non-stop stream of conscious dance floor mix.

‘Better Off As Two’s filtered intro tips its hat to Daft Punk before bursting into an exquisite dance pop song. With a tripped-out video by legendary director Tim Pope (Soft Cell, The Cure) a Youtube must-see, ‘Better Off As Two’ was the debut single from the album released in April 09.

‘Gotta Boyfriend?’ is a sad/sweet club track – mixing melancholy and energy like the most heart-bustingly brilliant dance-floor tracks. ‘Now I wonder why I am this way; I don’t know where you really strayed; your empty touch fractures all of my skin’.

‘Confusion Girl’ is single two released on Monday 6th July. An electronic pop song of stadium proportions it chimes and glimmers.

‘Your Boy’ with its arpeggio piano slows the tempo to a ballad. Vincent is a self-taught piano prodigy that has an alternative live set transposing all his techno-pop numbers to piano. The song is an unrequited letter signed ‘your boy’. Or as the lyric vividly says: ‘however hard it was sometimes; you seemed to know the words and hum the lines; to songs that make your heart so sore; maybe I should write one more’.

‘When Your Around’ was co-produced with Berlin’s Boys Noize over an internet connection. The club production comes through in its staccato hi-tech re-imagining of The Strangler’s ‘Golden Brown’.

‘3 Little Words’ gossamer synths are layered over the bubbling energy of an instant-classic pop song. Even at his catchiest Vincent’s lyrics are revelatory elliptical poetry: ‘Take the time and you might understand; feelings have no thoughts and they ain’t got any plans’.

‘Wonder Woman’ razor-sharp melody shows ELO’s influence on Frankmusik’s world – picked up by osmosis from his Mum’s record collection – as does ‘Complete Me’s soaring techni-colour orchestra.

‘Vacant Heart’s rolling 80’s production frames a metaphor about a heart where ‘love ain’t moving in’.

4 to the floor ‘Time Will Tell’ is a Basement Jaxx stomper already proving to be a live favourite. Vincent went round the UK in January 09 as Keane’s main support on their arena tour playing in front of 150,000 people. His April 09 Live & Lost tour saw him tour the UK solely relying on his fans for travel, accommodation and bookings. It was turned into a show for MySpace and Channel 4 (Davina McCall was the super fan that drove him to his last gig at Camden Dingwalls). 200,000 people watched the show on 9th April on TV and half a million and counting people watched his escapades on MySpace. Not since Lily Allen has an artist been borne out of the MySpace generation. In fact the conversation between the technology and the artist began when Vincent had to call the project Frankmusik with a ‘k’ as Frankmusic had already been taken on MySpace.

The last two tracks on the album are running-on-empty ballads. Both futuristically crackle with yearning. ‘Done Done’s lyric is bleak: ‘you took the only part of me made it into misery; now I am left in the cold’. His vocal mechanically repeats the title at the chorus. The epic ‘Run Away From Trouble’ is an artistic high point – set at sunrise with a maelstrom of synth washes. Keep listening for ‘secret track’ ‘Olivia’ that is placed 5 minutes later on the commercial album.
Meanwhile Frankmusik has become one of 2009’s most in demand remixers/producers with a dozen remixes to his name for everyone from avant-garde Brooklyn act Telepathe to The Pet Shop Boys; he has also produced two tracks on the forthcoming album by No 1 grime pop star Tinchy Stryder.

With his debut single ‘Better Off As Two’ reaching the upper reaches of the charts and more singles from the album primed to explode, Frankmusik’s trajectory is star-bound. ‘Complete Me’ is a cohesive artistic whole from one of the country’s most important new songwriters. At the callow age of 23 Frankmusik is England’s new electric dreamer on the cusp of re-wiring the national consciousness.