Hello, everybody!
I’m happy to announce my new release, Pearl Daddy—a limited-edition “Concept Single” featuring two exclusive tracks, “Pearl Daddy” and “Bilal”.
Strictly limited to 100 copies, it is pressed on 7” white vinyl and presented in a lovingly prepared package with a pull-out 12-page booklet. It will be released on 8 April, but it is available to order at my Bandcamp page, where the title track is available to stream now.
Pearl Daddy began life as a slightly geeky joke—the idea of marking my 45th birthday with a 45rpm single. From there, it felt like a natural step to use the songs to reflect on being 45 itself. Middle-aged experience is still rarely addressed in popular music, and middle-aged queer experience even less so; it was this latter perspective that I wanted to begin to explore here.
Rather than leaning heavily into autobiography, I chose instead to write songs informed by my reading of queer literature. This impulse connects to a broader and growing preoccupation in my work with history and identity—something that will be explored much more fully in the album to come.
I wasn’t consciously seeking out writing about Morocco, but in the course of my reading I began to notice a recurring pattern: 20th-century gay writers such as Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, and William S. Burroughs repeatedly travelling to Tangier in search of a more hospitable climate for gay life.
That detail gradually suggested a setting and emotional world for the songs, which were inspired by the age-gap love affair between E. M. Forster and Mohammed el Adl, as described in Wendy Moffat’s biography of Forster (and in Damon Galgut’s fictionalised retelling in his novel Arctic Summer).
Given this North African context, I’ve tried to subtly expand my usual dream-pop palette with light Moroccan textures and influences, including contributions from Othmane El Mansouri (darbouka and other percussion) and Maryan Karpinskyi (oud), particularly on the second track, “Bilal”.
Pearl Daddy is also one of the noisiest things I’ve released, with more distortion and grit than usual—an intentional sidestep rather than a permanent shift in musical direction.
Alongside the music itself, I wanted to do something intentional with the 7” format and present two songs developed specifically for this release. Pearl Daddy is intended as a standalone work; these two tracks will not be compiled or re-released elsewhere.
The songs share melodic fragments and harmonic relationships, and are written as companion pieces: two halves of an affair, each addressed to the other person. This is what I mean by calling it a “Concept Single”—a song cycle, albeit a very compact one.
I put a great deal of thought into the artwork too. The 7” is housed in a sleeve with a 3mm spine, making room for a 12-page full-colour booklet—a lavish and almost unheard-of addition for the format—containing artwork, lyric fragments, and an essay. The sleeve features my own rustic pastel illustration of the Tangier skyline.
I’m very happy with how this release has turned out, having put almost as much conceptual thought into it as I would an album. I hope you enjoy it too.
Pearl Daddy will be released by Hinney Beast Records and will be available through UK record shops (distributed by Forte), in China (via Otter Records), and via my Bandcamp page.
Yours,
Daniel