Dead Nature announces debut album Watch Me Break Apart

Dead Nature, the solo project of former Spring King singer and prolific producer (The Big Moon, Calva Louise, Circa Waves, Dream Nails, Genghar, Police Car Collective) Tarek Musa, is announcing the release of debut album Watch Me Break Apart, and sharing the video for new single “Hurricane”. It follows the boisterous, sky-high indie-pop dramatics of recent single “Red Clouds”, which drew support from BBC Radio 1, BBC 6 Music, Clash, DIY, Dork, The Line of Best Fit, NME, The Independent, and The i Paper.

“Hurricane” is another insistent earworm from Dead Nature. It ponders the innocence of youth, the decisions made by older generations, and how these are affecting the young. Tarek elaborates: “I’ve never been good at being overtly political, I don’t feel smart enough with words to express myself to the level some do, but the song for me was a nudge in that direction. It was a bit of a homage to Whole Wide World by Wreckless Eric, with its very brittle and simple guitar intro. It’s a little naïve in its delivery at times, tongue in cheek like the B52’s and full of energy with the edge of a late 70’s Clash song. Like a train picking up speed, I wanted to keep up the momentum of the message to the song and didn’t want many moments of respite.”

He Continues: “I had only recently moved into my studio and had just finished working with Calva Louise on their EP. It was one evening when I text Jess (lead singer and guitarist) asking if she’d get the train to Liverpool to do some Backing Vocals. She has such a raw energy that matched the track so well and we put down her vocals in about 25 mins. You can also hear the scuzzy vocals of Joe Wills (producer for Stealing Sheep, Dan Croll and Mikael Paskalev) layered up too.”

Producer and songwriter Tarek Musa has for a long time placed himself at the centre of other artists’ worlds, helping to hone sounds and build scenes through his production work for artists such as The Big Moon, Genghar, and Dream Nails, Calva Louise, Police Car Collective - as well as providing remixes for the likes of Circa Waves. As BBC Radio 1's Jack Saunders noted recently on-air, "we owe a lot to him out here... he's putting the passion from [Spring King] into the future of the alternative music that we love." With Dead Nature, Musa allows himself to step back from his role as architect for others and set about pursuing his own creative impulses.

Throughout Watch Me Break Apart, internal anxieties are made external, and re-purposed into a carnival of multi-coloured, fuzzed-up indie-pop. The strain of social media and a whirlwind news-cycle compound on the album’s cartwheeling title track, pairing thoughts of sleepless nights with isolated imagery (“A car waits at the lights, no one’s in the driver’s seat / In the ocean stands a tree”). "50 Foot Wall" and the paradoxically light-hearted "Hurricane" were both written against the backdrop of a growing climate crisis, and "Ladlands" zeroes in on social and political struggle, the rate at which change is happening, and the reality-warping nature of the echo-chamber.

Guro Gikling from All We Are sings backing vocals across the whole album, except for Hurricane which Jess Allanic from Calva Louise appears on.