Fact Residency: Blackhaine
Fact Residency: Blackhaine
Bringing the same visceral energy to music, movement, poetry and performance, Blackhaine has proven himself to be a vital new voice. Listen to what he has to say.
For multidisciplinary artist, MC and choreographer Tom Heyes, Blackhaine is both an artistic alias and shorthand for the “dark, hateful place” that his work is channelled from. Approaching sound, image, movement and poetry with the same visceral energy, Heyes seeks to transform the grey, bleak landscapes he associates with his birthplace of Lancashire and his native Manchester into sites of creative catharsis, elevating stories of depression, deprivation, substance abuse and small-time gangsters into vital transmissions from Britain’s darkest depths.
Blackhaine Presents: Womb
Blackhaine Presents: Womb
Rawtape assembles an eerie patchwork of looping movement and GAN animation for the melancholy closer to Armour, the latest collection of tracks from Blackhaine.
‘Womb’ marks the melancholy close to Armour, a collection of five tracks that Blackhaine describes as “an opus to inner city environments, long nights, heavy mornings and lost months.” Rising producer Rainy Miller moves from orchestral ambience, through cavernous bass experiments, to elegant drill variations, each track pinned to the ground under the weight and heft of Heyes’ raw and piercing delivery.
The EP was written during a time of restlessness and upheaval for Heyes. “The early start of 2019 I was working at one of the train stations in Manchester”, he explains, “drinking heavily and not sleeping/having attacks due to the pharmaceutical drugs I was taking.” He recollects vicious mornings, “when your kidney feels like a piece of coal”, and i