Despite today’s world of pro-tools, curated playlists and music camps (no, we didn’t know they were a thing either until Stormzy brought them up), there’s still no scientific formula to writing a classic.
Songs can emerge in an instant as if from thin air in the studio; some can be years in the making. Recording sessions can be tortuous ones with no discernable end in sight; others over in just days and a series of nailed one-takes.
Flicker – the 2022 solo LP from Andy Bell and Live4ever’s newly crowned album of the year – sits in a different, less distinct category, with songs direct from the here-and-now flowing along side half-forgotten sketches which stretch back years. A ‘dual reality’, as the Ride and Oasis guitarist describes it, ‘existing in the past and existing now’.
“Some of it is truly brand new but it’s all woven around this skeleton of backbeats and chord structures that I’ve been working on for years and years,” Bell explains during an exclusive interview with Live4ever.
Read the interview in full here and to enter a competition to win a signed copy of Flicker.