N
ewton Battenburg Faulker is a talent of virtuoso standards; carving a path from his Guilford Music Academy education, through the rite of passage various bands – a Green Day cover act and a funk-rock band noted – he finger-picked, hand slapped
and fret danced his way to become a solo star with an upcoming third album to his name. Te thing is, is that we didn’t get this information from Newton’s mouth; he would no more claim status as a guitar virtuoso than he would a molecular physicist. He doesn’t even consider himself a singer. Luckily, his songs betray his modesty, and portray him for the musical mastermind he is…
So where are you now Newton? I’m in my studio at home.
Very nice… I was going to ask you about your home studio actually; I read that you’d been setting it up – did you manage to record a lot of the new album there? Yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing – I’ve just sort of been toppingand tailing album stuff and kinda doing odd bits.
Is it a good environment for you to work in, at home? Do you manage to stay motivated? It does make a difference, but the tricky thing, to be honest is stopping, as opposed to getting started! I work in my head pretty much every second that I’m awake and the last few weeks have been pretty bad and I was pretending to go to sleep really! I’d kind of tuck myself in and wait ‘til everyone was asleep and say, “Are you asleep?!” Ten I’d sneak off and work!
We’re tantalisingly close to hearing some new material from you, because you’re releasing your EP next Tuesday. Do you think that will release some of the pressure, because you must be desperate to get your new material out? To be honest, I think I’m still carrying it all in my head and I think you do for a while after it’s out; it doesn’t instantly dissolve. You do end up carrying it around for a while and I’m still double-
20 /May 2012/
outlineonline.co.uk
checking everything for the EP, like is that definitely good enough?! Tat high note, is that… OK, good.
So is a release date a good release of pressure, or does it actually intensify? Te main thing that has massively reassured me – in fact there’s been two major ones recently; there was playing all my new stuff at gigs, which I did recently on the pop-up gigs that I did for six dates. At the end of the first gig, I was like ‘woah, people really got into that,’ so it actually went really well and I was astounded by how much new stuff I could get away with playing. Apparently the first thing I played one night was up on YouTube before I’d even come off stage at the end!
What is it about these new songs, do you think, that’s given them such immediacy in the connection there? Tey’re just very much written to be played live, which wasn’t so much the case before. I’m probably playing the game a little bit more on the second album; on the first album, I was trying to write songs that I thought people would like, and I was trying to write songs that would work on the radio, and I was kind of over-thinking it a tiny bit… Live is where I’m most comfortable, so it’s a lot easier to listen to in a lot of ways.
I know you’ve been asked a lot, but how close are we to the release of the new album? Well it’s definitely summer, and it’s kind of bobbinga little bit between three possible points. It’s definitely going to be this summer though, because it HAS to be summer as well. I’ve only really come to respect how much I’m kinda linked to sunshine, which is a strange thing to become aware of! I moved into a new place and on the first day that the sun shone this year, someone stopped me in the corridor, by the main door where you could see the sun and my face and was suddenly like, ‘Are you Newton Faulkner?!’
It’s been a prolific period of songwriting for you, writing this album; I read that you had about 50 songs to choose from… Sixty-five! Haha, it’s just that I was trying to release the album last year; I was ready to release a whole album last summer and then obviously you find out that it’s not happening and you’re like, ‘Oh, alright… what shall I do?!’ So I thought I guess I just keep writing and I took the things that I liked and either kept it on and improved it, or finished it in some cases. I also took vibes and wrote better songs in the same vibe, which is another thing that I end up doing quite a lot. You’ve kinda got something which feels really good, just not quite enough of a song, then you take the vibe and take an offspring of that song.
You’ve toured extensively, I think it’s fair to say, so even while you’ve been waiting for this album to be released, you’ve spent some time out on the road. Had you travelled much before your career took off? No, not really, not to the same degree; I guess since the first album came out, I’ve been all over the place, it’s been amazing. I think it definitely seeps into
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