Black Vinyl Blawan’s new album SickElixir, released through XL Recordings, is a comprehensive realisation of the sound that he’s been pursuing for his whole career. It’s a record that he perceives to be his debut full-length and a deeply personal creative endeavour, one that helped him process family trauma, emotional upheaval, and the loss of friends.Growing up in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, Blawan (real name Jamie Roberts) was obsessed with playing the drums, locking himself away for hours on end into an insular world of permanent percussion. When he was 14, he started working in a maggot farm and he credits the clanging sound of the farm’s industrial mincer as an influence on the way his music sounds – you can hear the echoes of rattling machinery in the fierce, meticulous drum programming that’s become his signature. After playing in various metal bands, Roberts’ musical horizons began to expand through visits to the West Indian Centre in Leeds, where he was introduced to techno, dubstep and everything in between.Blawan emerged as a solo artist at the turn of the 2010s with EPs on cult labels such as Hinge Finger and Hessle Audio. He’s received widespread critical acclaim for his personal projects, while also forging a career as one half of live techno act Karenn and the metal-inspired band Persher, both formed in partnership with his close collaborator Pariah.SickElixir cements his position as one of Britain’s most unique, pioneering artists, operating firmly in a lane of his own but in the same creative league as artists such as Aphex Twin, Bjork or Thom Yorke. It’s a manifesto for the way he sees music and sees himself, a journey through his own past but sonically a vision for the future.
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