ブラジルの薫風と英国の森が共鳴する、あまりにも純粋で美しいオーガニック・ソウル。

マルチ奏者、プロデューサー、そしてソングライターとして類まれな才能を持つBarney Keen。かつてブラジル北西部に身を置き、現地のポピュラー音楽であるMPBを深く吸収した彼は、ポルトガル語を操りクラシック・ギターで曲を紡ぐ独自のスタイルを確立した。その圧倒的な感性は、James BlakeやLianne La Havasといった名立たるアーティストから支持され、ブラジル音楽の至宝Milton Nascimentoとも親交を結ぶほどだ。

10曲で構成されたアルバム『Harbinger』には、彼が幼少期を過ごした英国南西部の広大な空や森林の情景が映し出されている。数年にわたり書き留められた個人的な断片が、アコースティック・ギターの調べや洗練されたリズム、そして透明感のあるヴォーカルによって、彩り豊かなアンサンブルへと姿を変えた。フォークやソウル、実験的な電子音を自在に操る彼の音作りは、まさに繊細な音の錬金術そのもの。

ヴァイナルの溝から立ち上がるのは、単なる記録を超えた、生命力に満ちた音のテクスチャーだ。重層的なアレンジメントの中に、遠い地平線を見渡すような開放感と、真実を追求する純粋な表現が息づいている。ロンドンの重要レーベルTouching Bassが世に送る、音楽の境界を軽やかに超える傑作。

A1. Double Bind
A2. Shallow Light
A3. Figure Out
A4. Why Solo
A5. Fools
B1. 4th May
B2. Against The Odds
B3. Harbinger
B4. Etape
B5. Today Is Not The Day

Multi-instrumentalist producer and songwriter Barney Keen makes music for the long drive and nature’s embrace. Influenced by a dynamic range of styles including Brazilian MPB (having spent time in northwest Brazil, learned Portuguese and written songs on classical guitar), experimental electronic music, folk, soul and other rhythms, it’s clear in Barney’s own creations that he’s not only a lover, but a delicate alchemist of those sonic worlds.

Unsurprisingly, he has found home in other kindred spirits exploring music with a similar curiosity. Having recorded/written with and found fans in James Blake, Lianne La Havas, Ego Ella May, Demae, Sam Crowe, Fred Thomas, Paul White, Kae Tempest and — having stayed at his house during a 2023 trip to Rio, Brazil — Milton Nascimento.

Like them, he masterfully blends the organic with truthful expression. An approach which can be traced back to his youth in the rural southwest of England surrounded by a musical family:

“There are scenes of natural places stored permanently in my mind that inform the mood of the music I make. Open spaces, distant horizons, woodlands and big skies”, he notes.

“Being out of that environment for most of my life now I find I can conjure up the feeling of it through music.”

The proof is all over his 10-track debut album Harbinger, which arrives on London-based imprint Touching Bass in May 2025.

The record shifts both sonically and thematically between blissful imagination and revelations of the day-to-day, and the sharper realities of adulthood. Although pooled together from many different stages of his life, the songs feel energetically bound. Slowly transformed from a makeshift sonic diary of loose memos into ornate arrangements over the course of several years.

Barney describes the mission statement as "only that of living and trying to be truthful with the expression”.