'Bornstar' by Duke Keats

On October 25^th, Duke Keats' latest EP, ‘Bornstar' is completed with the addition of the final, title, track (joining previous singles "Android", "Data Machinery" and "Heavy Heartbreak") and graciously he's let "Hot Music Live" have a preview.

It's been a busy & righteous month for him, including performing his own material plus a solo version of "The Ballad of John & Yoko" (originally a number one hit for The Beatles in the unlikely event that you don't recognise the title) at the "Acorns for Peace" walk in collaboration with Coventry Food Union & London's Goldsmith's College to mark fifty years since John & Yoko planted acorns at Coventry Cathedral.

So I'll get the obvious comment out of the way first (and I've already rehearsed it in previous articles): isn't the title apt?

Crafted again with collaborator Mason Le Long (who's already appeared in one review in the magazine this week with Batsch and will be again tomorrow) at Subwuf Studio, "Bornstar" is arguably the most clear evidence of their shared musicality: at least as far as the music goes as Duke prefers his vocals lifted higher in the mix than Batsch tend to favour.

Skittering about playfully, the underpinning track neatly bins any attempt to pin a sense of genre down (if any reviewer should be so incautious after so many of his songs): if the opening bars suggest that "he's going a bit Joy Division on this one" then he swerves off into a completely different arc a bit KLF for example. It's hard to think of anyone who performs so  many unexpected manoeuvres so consistently yet pulls them off which such aplomb as to make them sound completely natural.  Bowie perhaps?

Lyrically, we're given something much less obviously linked to the title as "Android" was: again, a bit like the Thin White Duke, our Duke likes the elliptical & oblique as much as the direct. You do need to process all this artist's tracks to get out of them even a fraction of the detail he crafts into them (and it's so much more rewarding when you do). Personally I think I can detect within this one various musings on his life within the musical world: the struggles, the interactions with others of various degrees of helpfulness, etc. Quite at what level of modesty/confidence/irony/self-awareness we can take the assertion that "I'm a Bornstar" is impossible to guess. Knowing Duke, probably elements of all these. The level of reflection and pondering is high: as with many of his songs (and not least with the objective detachment in their vocals), he does seem to  know & understand more about things than the rest of us. Which is another part of the attraction of his talent.

I'm sure many Dukefans (and probably the artist himself) won't be happy with my tendency to over-intellectualise my response to his songs at the expense as other perspectives, but to me, the fact that his music is so layered that it has and intellectual attraction as well as an emotional one helps explain the accolades.

And this is just the tip of a Ducal iceberg: so prolific is this artist that he has not one but two more entire EPs ready to go (plus the most exciting potential collaboration with another musician whom I mention whenever I get the opportunity): so much so that I advise you to look out for unexpected appearances since he told me: "..the industry model of releasing singles each month is too slow for me.." To be honest, the thought of Duke Keats working to anybody's model other than his own, let alone the stultifying commercial one, had not crossed my mind.

So keep on watching this space for your Duke Keats updates.