Music
Blood In The Water
AB: 14 Oct 2022 - Blood In The Water
Listen now to the new Single Blood In The Water.
Confession
AB: 24 Jun 2022 - Confession
Listen now to the new Single Confession.
A Thorn With A Face
AB: 04 Dec 2020 - A Thorn With A Face
Listen now to the debut EP of Keir and buy it on vinyl in Keir's Official Shop.
AB: 16 Aug 2021
Buy now the official print and more for the single "Boys Will Be Girls" in Keir's Official Shop.
Bio
KEIR – A reason to believe.
“I was a support worker for people with severe disability and mental health issues before I got signed. It changes you.”
KEIR is a one-off. That’s with the proviso that he bears a striking resemblance to artists like Beck and Pink and, perhaps even Prince. They all share one thing in common: they kick (or in Prince’s case, kicked) against the pricks. Naturally, it’s easier to do this if you call yourself something incendiary like The Sex Pistols and your debut album is called Never Mind The Bollocks, but with songs like She’s Like A Swan, Lemonade and Time (Is A Healer), Keir has placed himself in amongst the very best. These songs, these tiny snapshots of a life being lived, are just about as nuanced as you can get. These are beatific, sugar-coated assaults on the soul.
Easy for you to say, I hear you cry, but herein lies the rub: all we ever asked for was an artist with a vision and a purpose, someone to carry us along. Keir has been worth the wait. But he’s also someone who defies categorization – think George Michael – and who has a deep mistrust of the world around him.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
“Art makes me happy. There is never ever a reason to be bored. There is always something you can do. Paint, make something, play a guitar.”
Keir is a singer, performer and multi-instrumentalist, entirely comfortable with the fact that he can’t read music. “I write and play music intuitively,” he says. “If I knew the intimate details of what a chord actually is, I wouldn’t be able to attack writing a song in a childlike way.” Correspondingly, he maintains music “isn’t like Maths”. Though Philip Glass might have something to say about that, Keir’s point is simple. “I don’t like clever music” he says “I like chaos and disgusting, atonal middle-eights.”
“I like people who are real – people who are emotionally truthful, caring, and honest and open about how the world makes them feel.”
Born in Bath, Keir was brought up in the small West Country town of Corsham, the child of an English father and a half-Indian mother. His maternal grandfather hailed from Bangalore, and his mother’s mixed-race heritage ensured she experienced racial prejudice first-hand during her own childhood on the Isle Of Wight.
The eldest of three brothers – the middle sibling plays drums in Keir’s band live, and on his records – Keir began playing guitar and then keyboards in his early teens, although he readily admits, he set off wanting “to be like Nick Cave and not play an instrument at all.” Keir initially (almost exclusively) devoured pop music, listening to artists like Avril Lavigne and Enrique Iglesias, before his brother turned him onto Jimi Hendrix. After that, a stint as a trashy-garage-guitar-and-drums, White Stripes-influenced, two-piece – with his brother – resulted in him not thinking or particularly caring about his future anymore. “Early on,” admits Keir, “I just wanted to be famous, These days, none of that matters. It’s like I’m living through some kind of after-life.”
Well, of course, these days involves a five-year-long, writing and recording relationship, with fellow musical traveller, George Glew – he holds the whole thing together, you, get the picture. He’s successfully transformed “the darkness, joy and isolation of the human condition” into that rare beast, music with a pounding, heartbeat, depth, and an instant, classic feel that’ll make you think you’ve had these songs knocking around the house for years. Either that, or Keir has somehow wired himself into some illicit song-writing machine.
“Art provides some kind of meaning to my life. Art is connecting to people. Art is more powerful than conversation.”
Appropriately enough, it seems just about the right juncture in proceedings to let you know that Keir sometimes sounds like nothing - or no one - on Earth. ”Melody comes first for me,” reveals Keir, and then, as if to confirm the diagnosis, “sometimes, I like the sound of the words more than their meaning.” Ultimately, of course, as we witness Keir moving between genres with the ease of an acrobat, we learn that he is “not interested in genre”, and this, of course, is how it should be.
“A real artist should just do their own thing” - Keir.
Blood In The Water is out October 14th 2022, through Vertigo/Universal. UK live dates for late 22 and early 23 will be announced soon. His as-yet-untitled debut album will be released in mid-2023.
© Jane Savidge, September 2022.
“I was a support worker for people with severe disability and mental health issues before I got signed. It changes you.”
KEIR is a one-off. That’s with the proviso that he bears a striking resemblance to artists like Beck and Pink and, perhaps even Prince. They all share one thing in common: they kick (or in Prince’s case, kicked) against the pricks. Naturally, it’s easier to do this if you call yourself something incendiary like The Sex Pistols and your debut album is called Never Mind The Bollocks, but with songs like She’s Like A Swan, Lemonade and Time (Is A Healer), Keir has placed himself in amongst the very best. These songs, these tiny snapshots of a life being lived, are just about as nuanced as you can get. These are beatific, sugar-coated assaults on the soul.
Easy for you to say, I hear you cry, but herein lies the rub: all we ever asked for was an artist with a vision and a purpose, someone to carry us along. Keir has been worth the wait. But he’s also someone who defies categorization – think George Michael – and who has a deep mistrust of the world around him.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
“Art makes me happy. There is never ever a reason to be bored. There is always something you can do. Paint, make something, play a guitar.”
Keir is a singer, performer and multi-instrumentalist, entirely comfortable with the fact that he can’t read music. “I write and play music intuitively,” he says. “If I knew the intimate details of what a chord actually is, I wouldn’t be able to attack writing a song in a childlike way.” Correspondingly, he maintains music “isn’t like Maths”. Though Philip Glass might have something to say about that, Keir’s point is simple. “I don’t like clever music” he says “I like chaos and disgusting, atonal middle-eights.”
“I like people who are real – people who are emotionally truthful, caring, and honest and open about how the world makes them feel.”
Born in Bath, Keir was brought up in the small West Country town of Corsham, the child of an English father and a half-Indian mother. His maternal grandfather hailed from Bangalore, and his mother’s mixed-race heritage ensured she experienced racial prejudice first-hand during her own childhood on the Isle Of Wight.
The eldest of three brothers – the middle sibling plays drums in Keir’s band live, and on his records – Keir began playing guitar and then keyboards in his early teens, although he readily admits, he set off wanting “to be like Nick Cave and not play an instrument at all.” Keir initially (almost exclusively) devoured pop music, listening to artists like Avril Lavigne and Enrique Iglesias, before his brother turned him onto Jimi Hendrix. After that, a stint as a trashy-garage-guitar-and-drums, White Stripes-influenced, two-piece – with his brother – resulted in him not thinking or particularly caring about his future anymore. “Early on,” admits Keir, “I just wanted to be famous, These days, none of that matters. It’s like I’m living through some kind of after-life.”
Well, of course, these days involves a five-year-long, writing and recording relationship, with fellow musical traveller, George Glew – he holds the whole thing together, you, get the picture. He’s successfully transformed “the darkness, joy and isolation of the human condition” into that rare beast, music with a pounding, heartbeat, depth, and an instant, classic feel that’ll make you think you’ve had these songs knocking around the house for years. Either that, or Keir has somehow wired himself into some illicit song-writing machine.
“Art provides some kind of meaning to my life. Art is connecting to people. Art is more powerful than conversation.”
Appropriately enough, it seems just about the right juncture in proceedings to let you know that Keir sometimes sounds like nothing - or no one - on Earth. ”Melody comes first for me,” reveals Keir, and then, as if to confirm the diagnosis, “sometimes, I like the sound of the words more than their meaning.” Ultimately, of course, as we witness Keir moving between genres with the ease of an acrobat, we learn that he is “not interested in genre”, and this, of course, is how it should be.
“A real artist should just do their own thing” - Keir.
Blood In The Water is out October 14th 2022, through Vertigo/Universal. UK live dates for late 22 and early 23 will be announced soon. His as-yet-untitled debut album will be released in mid-2023.
© Jane Savidge, September 2022.