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Ryan Keen
Magazzini Generali - Milano
09 Marzo 2014
“I have much to say,” sings Ryan Keen on his track Orelia, and it’s true: he does have plenty to communicate, but then, he’s packed quite a lot into his first quarter-century. And now he’s coming to tell you his stories. The singer-songwriter with the warm, breathy voice, technically virtuosic guitar playing style and armful of confessional and/or observational material is about to become your favourite new bard.
He was born in 1987, in Totnes, to a speech therapist mother and deep sea diver dad. Growing up, he listened to an eclectic mix of music and learnt various guitar styles. He studied Commercial Music at Westminster University with the intention of pursuing a career in the music industry, either in law or management – he did work experience at a Music Management Company, who looked after Zero 7 and David Holmes – when a couple of major events had the galvanising effect of turning his dream of an alternative future as a musician into a reality.
“I lost a friend in my final year at University,” explains Ryan. “He died suddenly from heart failure. He was fit and healthy and it came totally out of the blue. That really rattled me. But that’s what got me started as a singer-songwriter. I realised how fragile and short life is. I had been nervous and shy about performing but now I really wanted to do it. It struck a chord, the realisation that anyone can go at any time, so you might as well have a go.”
It was while still at Uni that he began performing and writing songs for other musicians. His first professional gig was playing for an artist called Lily Mckenzie, and his next was for rising urban star Delilah. His first solo show was in a pub in Stockwell to a crowd of no more than 20.
“I was unbelievably terrified,” he recalls. “It was the most nervous I’ve ever been. I haven’t had stage fright like that since!”
After a period on the open-mic circuit, Ryan began writing and recording his first EP – with Josh Friend of North London dubstep heroes, Modestep – for early 2010 release. Entitled Aiming For The Sun, it featured Thank You, Chasing Shadows, Primrose Hill and the title track.
“It was completely self-released,” he explains. “I sold a few hundred copies at gigs and it helped me get to the next level.”
The next level was winning a competition that took him to annual industry new-artist showcase, South by South West in Texas, where Ryan performed in March 2011. Soon afterwards, he signed a deal with Imagem, the world’s largest independent music publishers, and he found management, enabling him to give up his day job with hip shoe company Author.
That October, he was invited to go on tour with new acoustic sensation Ed Sheeran, an opportunity that would, Ryan admits, provide him with his “first decent exposure”. The trouble was, three weeks before the dates, Ryan severed the tendons in his right hand when he tried to open a bottle of wine without a corkscrew.
“It went massively wrong, the bottle shattered and the glass severed my wrist, cutting down to the bone,” he recounts with a shudder. “It couldn’t have gone much worse. I got rushed to Homerton A&E. Ironically, I’d been sofa surfing for a year because I couldn’t afford rent and, after signing with Imagem I had a bit of money and could afford to rent my own place. It was the first night in my flat in Dalston and I was due to go into the studio the next day to work on my next EP. Instead I had to go to hospital. They had to stop the bleeding, because it was ridiculous – like a horror film, spraying everywhere. I had investigative surgery and then the day after I had surgery to stitch up the tendons. They put me in a cast and once the morphine wore off I was allowed out.”
Luckily, Ryan had an expert physiotherapist who helped him to play guitar with a modified cast still on his right hand. Against all the odds he was able to go on the Sheeran tour, which helped grow his fanbase considerably.
Finally, in January 2012, he finished the Focus EP and the tracks Orelia, See Me Now and In My Mind. The title track was accompanied by a stop-motion video courtesy of his friend Andy Shackleford, who had done similar work for Postman Pat and Fireman Sam. The resulting promo won Best Music Video at the Limelight Video Awards.
The Focus EP effectively served as an invitation to appear at many of the major festivals that summer. There, Ryan would not just perform but also spend the night in his pimped-up VW van with the sound-system and fold-out double bed. But then, he’s a hardy type who grew up surfing down in Devon and learning martial arts.
By 2013, Ryan was supporting Plan B at the iTunes festival and was the only unsigned act appearing on the whole month long bill. He also recorded a live EP and another called Back To The Ocean which featured a duet with Newton Faulkner called Reflections In The Water, which led to an invitation to join him on tour as his special guest. He embarked on his own headline tour and supported Leona Lewis, which saw him playing arenas as well as the Royal Albert Hall in London.
“That was pretty outrageous,” he laughs, “playing such a prestigious venue where a lot of my heroes have played.”
Today, after furious gigging – 260 shows in the last 14 months – Ryan has accrued a sizable fanbase. He’s been remixed by Modestep and made a cameo on a single by rapper Benny Banks. His Twitter followers include everyone from Ed Sheeran to Harry Styles and he’s got the crucial support of Radio 1. He’s also collaborating with some of the scene’s key writers and producers: The Nexus (Lana Del Rey), Craze ‘n’ Hoax (Emeli Sandé), Fink (John Legend, Pro Green) and Dan Dare (Maverick Sabre, Wretch 32). Life couldn’t be better, even if his music is often deliciously sombre and downbeat, with lyrics torn from the pages of his diary and written as a form of therapy.
“My songs can be introspective,” he agrees. “I came to this from a pretty dark place, with my mate dying. That hit me pretty hard. But I always try to write with optimism.”
He cites as an example his song Aiming For The Sun and its lyric, “I’ll keep aiming for the sun so that my shadows fall behind.” “I’m always looking for the silver lining,” he says, “even if the subject matter is dark.”
On his forthcoming debut album, Room For Light – which was self-funded and recorded, largely in a small shed with jazz pianist and producer Patrick Wood – Ryan explores the light and shade of life and love, with a series of songs that are remarkable for their subtly rich arrangements and his intimate style of playing and singing – you can hear him draw breath and feel the scrape of his fingers on the fretboard.
The songs are quietly varied. Opening track Know About Me showcases Ryan’s unusual guitar style and his husky, comforting baritone. Fans of artists from John Martyn to Ray Lamontagne will find much to enjoy here. The song increases in richness as it proceeds, the guitar enhanced by keyboards and strings. Skin And Bones is another fully arranged tune, almost Coldplay-ish, positioning Ryan less as a troubadour and more as a potential band frontman with arena appeal. You can imagine this being sung by big crowds in big venues. See Me Now opens with ambient electronic effects, and has a catchy, textured chorus. Old Scars marries a personal lyric with an infectious melody and a layered arrangement, with guitar, bass, drums, keyboards and backing vocals serving a song exploring memory and loss.
Trouble would have made a perfect way into side two of the vinyl edition of the album: it’s an uptempo, bluesy, Clapton-esque number. By contrast, All This Time is haunting, echoey, the reverb expressing Ryan’s palpable sense of anguished isolation. Body Over Mind has an unusual structure and a jazzily linear rhythm over which Ryan free-associates with shades of Tim Buckley circa Greetings From LA. When The Day Breaks finds him declaring, “I’m haunted by trouble”, and although there is a key change halfway through that strikes a note of caution, the song closes the album in an optimistic way.
The title of the album, Room For Light, was lifted from future single Skin And Bones: “A darker place has more room for light”. With a highly prestigious London show coming up at The Scala as part of his October tour, and the album due the month before, Ryan Keen has good reason to look on the bright side.
Coventry's Cathedral is a unique synthesis of old a new, born of wartime suffering and forged in the spirit of postwar optimism, famous for it's history and for being the most radically modern of Anglican cathedrals. Two cathedral's stand side by side, the ruins of the medieval building, destroyed by incendiary bombs in 1940 and the bold new building designed by Basil Spence and opened in 1962.
It is a common misconception that Coventry lost it's first cathedral in the wartime blitz, but the bombs actually destroyed it's second; the original medieval cathedral was the monastic St Mary's, a large cruciform building believed to have been similar in appearance to Lichfield Cathedral (whose diocese it shared). Tragically it became the only English cathedral to be destroyed during the Reformation, after which it was quickly quarried away, leaving only scant fragments, but enough evidence survives to indicate it's rich decoration (some pieces displayed nearby in the Priory Visitors Centre). Foundations of it's apse were found during the building of the new cathedral in the 1950s, thus technically three cathedrals share the same site.
The mainly 15th century St Michael's parish church became the seat of the new diocese of Coventry in 1918, and being one of the largest parish churches in the country it was upgraded to cathedral status without structural changes (unlike most 'parish church' cathedrals created in the early 20th century). It lasted in this role a mere 22 years before being burned to the ground in the 1940 Coventry Blitz, leaving only the outer walls and the magnificent tapering tower and spire (the extensive arcades and clerestoreys collapsed completely in the fire, precipitated by the roof reinforcement girders, installed in the Victorian restoration, that buckled in the intense heat).
The determination to rebuild the cathedral in some form was born on the day of the bombing, however it wasn't until the mid 1950s that a competition was held and Sir Basil Spence's design was chosen. Spence had been so moved by experiencing the ruined church he resolved to retain it entirely to serve as a forecourt to the new church. He envisaged the two being linked by a glass screen wall so that the old church would be visible from within the new.
Built between 1957-62 at a right-angle to the ruins, the new cathedral attracted controversy for it's modern form, and yet some modernists argued that it didn't go far enough, afterall there are echoes of the gothic style in the great stone-mullioned windows of the nave and the net vaulting (actually a free-standing canopy) within. What is exceptional is the way art has been used as such an integral part of the building, a watershed moment, revolutionising the concept of religious art in Britain.
Spence employed some of the biggest names in contemporary art to contribute their vision to his; the exterior is adorned with Jacob Epstein's triumphant bronze figures of Archangel Michael (patron of the cathedral) vanquishing the Devil. At the entrance is the remarkable glass wall, engraved by John Hutton with strikingly stylised figures of saints and angels, and allowing the interior of the new to communicate with the ruin. Inside, the great tapestry of Christ in majesty surrounded by the evangelistic creatures, draws the eye beyond the high altar; it was designed by Graham Sutherland and was the largest tapestry ever made.
However one of the greatest features of Coventry is it's wealth of modern stained glass, something Spence resolved to include having witnessed the bleakness of Chartres Cathedral in wartime, when all it's stained glass had been removed. The first window encountered on entering is the enormous 'chess-board' baptistry window filled with stunning abstract glass by John Piper & Patrick Reyntiens, a symphony of glowing colour. The staggered nave walls are illuminated by ten narrow floor to ceiling windows filled with semi-abstract symbolic designs arranged in pairs of dominant colours (green, red, multi-coloured, purple/blue and gold) representing the souls journey to maturity, and revealed gradually as one approaches the altar. This amazing project was the work of three designers lead by master glass artist Lawrence Lee of the Royal College of Art along with Keith New and Geoffrey Clarke (each artist designed three of the windows individually and all collaborated on the last).
The cathedral still dazzles the visitor with the boldness of it's vision, but alas, half a century on, it was not a vision to be repeated and few of the churches and cathedrals built since can claim to have embraced the synthesis of art and architecture in the way Basil Spence did at Coventry.
The cathedral is generally open to visitors most days, but now charges an entry fee (a fix for recent financial worries; gone are the frequent days I used to wander around it in search of inspiration!)and sadly visitors are also encouraged to enter by the far end of the building, contrary to Spence's intentions.
For more see below:-
This photo looks optimistic even though I'm not necessarily feeling it today. One of my best friends is happy though, having been asked out by the guy she'd liked for awhile. Good luck guys.
I, however, have an audition for Elizabeth Proctor in the Crucible tomorrow lunch. I don't think I've ever wanted a part so much; we don't have performances often, but we're studying the text in english and I actually love the book. (Hence this photo; www.flickr.com/photos/belladayys/4979495468/ ) I hope the part doesn't go to someone whose there for the sake of it. I have friends who are into it too though, and I'd be happy for them if they got it.
(And a little bitter. Maybe.)
Today was fairly meh. Had a nice morning and nice netball game (didn't think i'd ever say that, but I really rather enjoyed scoring seven goals. I have to get rid of my little hop-skip-jump when I score though. Had a rather nice team, and it was generally good fun. But came home with a headache, so now meh. Worried about tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed for me guys, I'll need it.
Press 'L' guys, you know you want to.
Optimism is the one quality more associated with success and happiness than any other. #optimism #happiness #inspiration
Decided to DIY another veggie - here's a zucchini plant...
Read more here: artbybernadette.com/optimism/
Aspen Gardens estate in Hammersmith, also photographed here and here by Nicobobinus, tireless chronicler of London housing estates.
The slums [that dominated this area in the late 19th and early 20th century] stretched from the river to King Street, an area now bisected by the A4. Histories of the area comment on the stark contrast between the slums and the grand buildings in King Street.
Riverside Gardens was part of the homes fit for heroes building program as slum clearance by the Council and completed in 1928. Neighbouring Aspen Gardens was built for returning soldiers after the 2nd World War and was opened in 1948 by Nye Bevin. At the fifty years celebration a plaque was unveiled by Michael Foot to his mentor.
The estate was the first to defy a local council and vote against voluntary stock transfer in the 1980's.
That's from the Radical History Walk of Hammersmith, archived online at Past Tense. From the same walk is this colourful description of those slums that used to exist in this area:
Furnival Gardens: Originally the Creek ran from Stamford Brook to the river, and this was the site of slums, factories and wharves, an area known as Little Wapping. On the riverside was the centre of heavy industry: Oil mills, lead works and Boat building. Behind this teeming slums where workers lived, in overcrowded and terrible conditions. Narrow alleys wove between factories, sheds and mills, each with their fumes and effluent.
In 1846 the District Medical Officer wrote: "Almost every house is visited with epidemic diarrhoea, so violent as to be mistaken for Asiatic cholera". The same report recorded that: “The scanty supply of water, the crowded state of the dwellings, the overflow of privies and cesspools, all combine to poison and destroy the health of the poorer inhabitants of Hammersmith and are allowed to create and perpetuate more than half of the diseases which are incidental to human nature itself.”
The Creek was filled in in 1936 but the Furnival Gardens were not created until created in 1951.
boatsbeaton.wordpress.com/ - reaaaaaaaad pls
it's a blog I made dedicated to my short fiction pieces and poems, etc
The sea by Lauttasaari, Helsinki has been frozen for some time, but the fisherman still hopes to use the fish traps.
A robin perches in my pear tree after an ice storm at my home near Cameron, MO, giving me a sense of hope that spring will indeed come again.
Ken approaches Cooper-Gran on Bugaboo Spire optimistic the weather will improve on a gloomy morning. Alana and I were on our way to try our second attempt on Crescent spire after being rained off the previous day when the boys caught up to us. Thanks to our rappelling mis-adventure we all got back onto the glacier around the same time that night. Ken's optimism paid off because the clouds all burned off and they had a successful ascent.
The Bugaboos - August 12-18, 2012
Living in Squamish I am very lucky to be surrounded by excellent rock to train my technical climbing skills as well as many great peaks for scrambling. But, until last week I had never had the opportunity to combine the two skills I've been developing for years. That all changed when a friend invited me to be her partner on the yearly trip my friend group takes. Two months after the invitiation, a partner swap, and a week of careful packing and preparation I actually found myself driving east about to embark on what would be the greatest adventure of my life to date.
The moment I arrived at basecamp my lofty climbing aspiration were downgraded to starting with a 4th class route and going from there. I received tons of advice from friends that had been going for several years, but still nothing could have prepared me for the reality of being there. The ascent to Applebee basecamp, the scale of the spires, the difficulty of the glaciers, and the exposure did not translate well to maps and photos I found myself in awe and terror. Every single obstacle I encountered was more physically and mentally demanding that I could have expected.
Even though we were with a large group of friends, we were on our own when we headed out for the day and often learning as we went. As a result we learned many lessons the hard way, including when to put crampons on, when to switch into rock shoes, how hard preventing rockfall can be, and all the ways rappelling can go wrong.
It was both the single most terrifying and rewarding experience of my life. Never did I expect to learn so much in a week, or do so little actual climbing. Instead it was a wild ride of alpine obstacles, and a truly life changing experience shared with great friends old and new.
A brief summary of my adventure:
Aug 12 - Hike into Applebee base camp with 80+lbs pack full of climbing, camping, and glacier gear as well as 7 days of food, and clothes for everything from -10 to +30 degrees celcius rain and shine.
Aug 13 - Eastpost spire, combination of Northeast and Northwest ridges.
Aug 14 - Crescent Spire, W ridge. - Rained off first attempt, after self arresting and improv. anchor construction.
Aug 15 - Crescent Spire, W ridge - Successful ascent followed by rappelling disaster involving ditching a rope that was later recovered
Aug 16 - Pigeon Spire, W ridge - Got 30m up route then turned back to save terror management skills for descent back down the Bugaboo-Snowpatch col
Aug 17 - Eastpost spire again and bathing in the tarn
Aug 18 - Hike out and long drive home
Please feel free to contact me with any questions regarding my experience.
Photos from this trip were taken with a combination of my Nikon D7000, Olympus uT8000 & GoPro HD2