Introducing: Duncan Lloyd

3 months ago 27th Aug 11:42

As guitarist with Maximo Park, Duncan Lloyd has worked alongside his bandmates as they collectively sculpt their brilliantly angular, romantic songs, working hard in the studio to make their albums sound the best they can. For his first solo release, however, Lloyd has changed his approach.

The songs are all his this time, along with the words, which he's singing himself for the first time. Studio production has been minimal, however, simply a process to get those songs down on tape, while the original idea is still fresh, so the charm of the song remains vital, intact. "I guess the album's the sound of someone writing songs," he suggests, "Capturing that initial excitement of a new idea, and sharing that with the listener."

Lloyd is intimately familiar with that excitement, forever finding new melodies and ideas within the six strings of his guitar. Typically, he'd save these up and share them with his band-mates, for Maximo Park song-writing sessions.

Sometimes, though, caught up in the heat of the creative moment, he'd pull out his home recording gear and get straight to work, to get the idea down on tape. "Not being a natural singer, I'd just go with the feel of the songs," he remembers. But he soon found himself enamoured by the raw charm of these scratch recordings. "Once you get something down on tape that you like, you don't really want to change it."

As months passed, Lloyd found himself with a growing collection of such tracks. "I didn't really plan to make a solo album, and certainly not so soon, but I guess I had developed a backlog of songs. People around me were telling me I should put the songs out. So I did."

Such simplicity is the hallmark of this endearing and addictive record. Lloyd says songwriting sessions with Maximo Park can be productively intense, ideas pounded into shape by the group's five members, changing arrangements and trying to push as many envelopes as they can.

By contrast, the solo album was "very much a case of writing a song, and then recording it as soon as possible, with the most natural arrangement. The idea would come first; it was more instinctive, I wasn't trying to develop the songs."

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