Radio Songs: Mandarin Orange Vinyl LP & Signed Print

Blur drummer Dave Rowntree is excited to announce details of his debut album, Radio Songs.

The album was produced by Leo Abrahams (Brian Eno, Wild Beasts, Ghostpoet).

“Radio has been a constant for me,” Rowntree reflects. “It’s been one of the steadying factors in my life.”

Hence the title of Radio Songs, Dave Rowntree’s debut solo album. Many of the songs on it began life with his recordings of the weird and wonderful sounds of atmospheric static in-between stations, using them as the foundations upon which he built the tracks.

“The idea of Radio Songs is me spinning through the dial,” he explains. “It sounds like you’ve got a radio tuned to some static and you spin the dial, and the song pops out of it. And then you spin the dial again, and the song dissolves back into the static.” Moreover, each of the songs on the record finds Rowntree exploring significant turning points in his life.

Best known as the drummer in Blur, Dave Rowntree is also something of a polymath: film and TV composer, podcaster, light aircraft pilot (and instructor), lawyer, and former Labour councillor. “I’ve always been a bit of a nomad,” he laughs. “Never quite satisfied. I suppose I’m endlessly ambitious, really.” Those ambitions have led him to the creation of Radio Songs, which he points out is “an album that I’ve been musing on and chipping away at for a few years now.”