Artist Spotlight: Alex Clare

While you may know Alex Clare’s 2013 BRIT Award nominated single “Too Close”, there is a lot to learn about the soulful man from North London. For starters, if you take a listen to his debut album, you’ll see that his style is not an easy one to pin down into one word. His music has been described as everything from having jazzy vocals to being soulful and reggae-infused, mixed with unexpected surges of pop, dubstep and electronic beats. This distinct, genre-merging sound is a product of his own soulful persona, mixed with the influence of mega-producers Diplo and Switch who worked with him on his debut album, The Lateness of the Hour. 

With the standout production team behind him, Clare’s songs aren’t smooth; they feature unexpected surges of soul, reshaped with a heavy electronic bassline. Alex says the duo made him think about his songs in a totally new way, in came polyrhythms and synth sounds that just wouldn't have happened otherwise. “I tend to be a bit more reserved when I write,” he laughs. “They put it all out there – and it works.” 

But Alex Clare is more than just a man with an admiral beard and soulful voice, he’s also a trained chef. Growing up and playing in bands around London, he wanted some additional security so he trained to be a chef while still playing and teaching himself piano and guitar.

Over the years, he travelled in and around London and Brighton, creating songs on his guitar that he says were more personal and pointed than any he’d written before. 

“I love one guy on a guitar telling stories,” he says. “I started putting whatever had happened to me – the women and the mistakes – into the songs. It’s supposed to be cathartic – but it’s not really. It just reminds you of it all.”

The new demos quickly found their way to Island Records, and soon, his hit track “Too Close” was featured in a Microsoft commercial, making the song a hit and boosting his stardom across the globe, even earning him his first BRITs nomination for British Single.

Since then, Clare has continued on the trail of success wirh 2012's "Treading Water" and we can't wait to hear more from him in 2013.