Win a copy of the Jim Noir album ‘Tower of Love’

1 month ago 14th Mar 11:13

Femalefirst are giving you the chance to win a copy of the Jim Noir album ‘Tower of Love’

Jim Noir's new single is called ‘What You Gonna Do’ and is out on 31st March and the album is called ‘Jim Noir’ it is out on 7th April.

Our tale begins, like so many others, in an unassuming English suburb. It’s late in the summer of 1982 in Davyhulme, a uniquely uninteresting Mancunian satellite famed for its proximity to the Trafford Centre (which, alas, has not yet been built), and the population of this sleepy town has just increased by one: Jacque and Jacqueline Noir have spawned a boy-child.

Jim (as he came to be known) enjoyed a typical childhood, entertaining himself with fanciful notions of becoming a footballer, a racing driver or a stuntman. But he soon realised he had a gift that involved not balls or wheels or fire-proof suits, but notes and treble clefs and whatnot. It was the gift of song. This was the ‘80s, remember, when Casio keyboards were atop every child’s Christmas wishlist. When Jim tickled the plastic ivories on his, a strange magic flowed from each digit, and by the tender age of nine he was busily composing his own songs.

“I remember making a tune up in front of the telly,” says Jim, misty eyed. “It was a protest song about the Vietnam war. I wasn’t happy with the situation and I thought something had to be said. It had no words but my music was so powerful you would have known what it was about.”

At school, young Jim found a like-minded soul named Batfinks, and the dynamic duo were soon wowing crowds at school talent shows. According to popular legend, their rendition of 808 State’s In Yer Face at a 1991 school assembly had to be heard to be believed.

“Me and Batfinks have a strange psychic sense when we play together which achieves bizarre results,” says Jim. “We have a huge back catalogue of music which will come out when I can afford to waste money on my own label.”

Here was Jim, making music for the love of it, until a karaoke competition at a holiday camp in 1994 turned his head. Awarded a Batman waterpistol for his rendition of the Grease Megamix, something clicked in Jim’s head. Make music: get rewards. It dawned on him: this was something he could do for a career.

His mind set on a course of action, Jim threw himself into his music, developing his own idiosyncratic method of songwriting. Jim finds inspiration in the mundanities of everyday life, in memories of childhood, and in the very process of music making itself – he’s already composed an ode to his computer and his favourite musical key (it’s C, in case you’re asked in a pub quiz in ten years’ time).

“I listen out for the strange things people say, those little rhymes or sayings people come out with,” says Jim, “although I can never remember them when I get home so I have to make my own up. Also, music completely on the other end of the spectrum to my own inspires me. I think that’s pretty healthy.”

By the time Jim met the founding fathers of My Dad Recordings in 2003, he was an oven-ready recording machine. My Dad Recordings knew the lad was special, and, under the pretence of a request for his autograph, signed Jim to a strict and binding contract.

The EPs followed – Eanie Meany, My Patch and A Quiet Man – each as glorious and inventive and colourful as the last. And with them came the trappings of life in the music industry.

“I’ve got my own chateau Noir now,” says Jim. “I’ve got more people who pretend to be my friends, and I have a 2% ego increase everyday. Other than that, life hasn’t changed at all.”

Taste-makers and hepcats whipped the EPs from record store shelves faster than they could press them up, and quickly they became the kind of sought-after items listed in the back pages of Record Collector. Jim’s mum sold hers on eBay for £49.50. There was demand, but there was no supply, so, wisely, My Dad whacked the best of the EPs (plus new tracks to stop long-time fans complaining) on Jim’s debut album, the wondrous Tower Of Love.

Imagine a Wurlitzer jukebox stacked with the hits of ELO, Super Furry Animals, Pepper-era Beatles, The Beta Band, The Beach Boys, early Pink Floyd and Supertramp. Now imagine blowing that jukebox up with a cartoon-style dynamite stick and making a record from the exploded fragments of vinyl and luminescent tubing. That’s a bit like what Tower Of Love sounds like.

Having thus far recorded every note on his recordings Jim recruited a band of automatons in order to sate the building public desire to see Noir live in all his nattily-dressed glory.

Incorporating support slots with a certain Mr Lennon (Sean) in America and like minded souls Super Furry Animals. The Tower Of Love tour took Jim and his combo around the world, from South By Southwest to all the other compass points and back to Manchester, where he began cooking up his next album (and, as a side-project, a wasp orchestra – don’t ask). Named Jim Noir after his own self, this second disc has its feet even further off the ground – it’s a concept album about a doomed astronaut’s reflections of life on earth.

“A lot has changed since I recorded Tower Of Love,” Jim says. “I even used a slightly different haircut on this album.”

Jim met the founding fathers of My Dad Recordings in which year?

A.2003
B.2004
C.2002