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Artist
Charlie Barnes
12+ albums
ambientelectronicalternative rockacousticpiano
about
If you believe that certain things are simply ‘meant to be’, then the coming together of Superball Music and singer/multi-instrumentalist Charlie Barnes must’ve been concocted in the cosmos light years ago. For both parties, Mancunian progressive rock heavyweights Oceansize and Amplifier have been hugely influential to their chosen paths, and where Superball ultimately signed both groups, so Barnes has gone onto work with the latter as a live and occasional studio collaborator, before hiring Steve Durose – a man famed for his work with both bands – to produce his debut LP, More Stately Mansions. “Steve's been a big influence on a lot of my decisions about song writing and direction over the last few years” Barnes says. “I don't think I had fully realised the importance of a good melody until I started spending more time listening to music with him. We started passing basement demos back and forth between us, and it was his arrangement for the choir part at the end of ‘Sing to God' that made me and the other guys in my band realise we needed to dramatically up our game.” Disorientating and captivating in equal measure during early appearances in Student Union bars and basement venues either side of the Pennines, as well as at European festivals Melt and Reeperbahn, the Leeds-based artist’s early performances took on the guise of a man vs. machine solo rock opera. Songs were constructed on stage as he writhed about on his stool like Silver Apples on uppers - the transmissions
