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.
Rainy Miller reflects on loss and healing in ‘Yellowman’
A self-directed visual featuring Preston-born choreographer and performer Amber Calland.
Rising Preston producer and multidisciplinary artist Rainy Miller reflects on loss, family and healing with his new single, ‘Yellowman’. A moving response to Pete Brassett’s book of the same name, the track sees the artist reckoning with the absence of his father, as well as his experiences of being united with him for the first time since he was a child.
Rainy used Brassett’s book “to frame the song in this context, exploring the similarities of losing what should have been a father figure, yet not in the same literal terms,” he explains. “When I saw him for the first time, that’s how it felt, an immediate sense of loss, the apparition of a supposed prominent figure that had not been present.”
Blackhaine Presents: I’m Only Here
Blackhaine delivers an evocative live performance of two new tracks, featuring mind-expanding production from Rainy Miller and Space Afrika.
In this Fact Original Commission, Blackhaine closes out his Fact Residency with I’m Only Here, a live performance of two new tracks that sees Tom Heyes linking up with rising producer Rainy Miller and Joshua Inyang of longtime Fact favourites Space Afrika. “Manchester feels so alive at the moment,” says Tom Heyes of the collaboration. “Space Afrika, Rainy Miller, Rawtape, Croww, Iceboy Violet, Acre, and many others contributing to the scene.”
“I think this collaboration represents the start of a new movement coming from this city,” Heyes continues. Earnestly terming Space Afrika “the best in the world right now” and exuding unstoppable enthusiasm for the hordes of vital producers, musicians and artists that make up Manchester’s numerous art and music scenes, Heyes likens the current atm
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