We first heard Nothing But Green Lights from Tom Vek's 2005 album We Have Sound a couple of years back and fell in love with the drawling vocals, Talking Heads keys and bobbing bassline, not to mention the super simple, super neat video (below). We Have Sound is a lo fi masterpiece that sits somewhere between The Fall and Beck at their collective best and it's hard to believe that the 2005 outing is the only album this hidden pop genius has produced. However, Vek (real name Tom Vernon-Kell), a twenty-nine year-old Londoner, has been making noises about releasing a new album in 2010, it's just that no one much seems to be able to substantiate this and the man himself flies well under the radar to the point of being mysterious. In recent times his Wikipedia entry has had a number of nameless posts suggesting the album is forthcoming, then not. It might be Island records, but then it might not be. His website includes numerous forums with fans asking where he is, "Tom sighting" etc and other sites are equally abstruse. Odd, obscure, we love it and "there's nothing but green lights" as far as we're concerned "in a 1989 Mercedes Benz..." Bring on that difficult second album Tom...
Monday, June 14, 2010
The Mysterious Mr Vek
We first heard Nothing But Green Lights from Tom Vek's 2005 album We Have Sound a couple of years back and fell in love with the drawling vocals, Talking Heads keys and bobbing bassline, not to mention the super simple, super neat video (below). We Have Sound is a lo fi masterpiece that sits somewhere between The Fall and Beck at their collective best and it's hard to believe that the 2005 outing is the only album this hidden pop genius has produced. However, Vek (real name Tom Vernon-Kell), a twenty-nine year-old Londoner, has been making noises about releasing a new album in 2010, it's just that no one much seems to be able to substantiate this and the man himself flies well under the radar to the point of being mysterious. In recent times his Wikipedia entry has had a number of nameless posts suggesting the album is forthcoming, then not. It might be Island records, but then it might not be. His website includes numerous forums with fans asking where he is, "Tom sighting" etc and other sites are equally abstruse. Odd, obscure, we love it and "there's nothing but green lights" as far as we're concerned "in a 1989 Mercedes Benz..." Bring on that difficult second album Tom...
