Joe Banfi: British Music Abroad

For:

SXSW 2013

Event date:

12 - 17 March 2013

Event venue:

various

Joe Banfi is a boy with a guitar but he’s more than just a lonesome acoustic troubadour. He’s not just a singer-songwriter, either, nor is he simply a musician with a voice. Here is someone whose intention it is to have his name embody a whole series of sounds and instruments, to signify an ethos, an aesthetic. To represent the idea of the solo artist as something more. 

For some sense of what Joe Banfi – a 23 year old from Northwich, a small commuter town outside of Manchester – is about, imagine Kurt Cobain if he had gone out on his own before Bleach or after Nirvana and hooked up with a producer up to the task of providing a wide-ranging palette of atmospheres and effects. One minute he’s singing in a whispering falsetto over sparse backing, the next he’s rasping and roaring over a wall of incendiary noise. The impression given is of a young man capable of anything.

No wonder Communion picked up on him and put his track, ‘Olive Green’, on their recent New Faces compilation.

Communion’s Kevin Jones and Ben Lovett could tell from Joe’s demos that he was channelling the right sort of artists in exactly the right way, offering a new, unique mix of vintage elements – of Nick Drake and the Deftones, of folk and grunge, even metal. And you can hear the speed with which he’s developed and progressed from winsome folkie to multifaceted recording artist over his two releases, 2012’s Iron EP and his forthcoming Nomads EP.

Joe Banfi’s search for the truth and powerful musical fusion of opposites mark him out as really special. One to watch in 2013, and then some. His‘Nomads’  EP is released on 4th March 2013 through Communion Records.

SXSW is a great opportunity for Joe to expand his worldwide audience and relationships in the industry outside the UK. He will be playing one of the hottest shows of the festival: Communion Records’ official showcase (time TBC).