Welcome to this week’s Launch Box
featuring Benjamin Clementine
Benjamin Sainte-Clementine is a Mercury Prize winning, British-French poet, pianist, composer, musician and a recording artist from London, England. He grew up in North London before moving to France for a period of time. During his spell singing in Paris he broke free from traditional song structure, inventing his own dramatic and innovative musical territory and consequently became a cult figure in the music and art scene. But it’s his life that inspires the art that gives Benjamin’s work such an absorbing context.
At 19, Clementine was sporadically homeless on the streets of Paris. He made enough from busking around Montmartre to secure himself a bed in a hostel, and a couple of nights a week he would perform at an Irish Bar. During those years, he might have been down and out in Paris, but he was on an upswing. His elastic tenor voice and self-analytical lyrics got him co-signed by Sir Paul McCartney after this performance on Jools Holland
Most critics describe him as a man of unusual intelligence and deep musicality with charisma on stage but find it difficult to place his music in one specific genre, mostly stating that it’s beyond category. However, his vocal range, ability and diction has been compared to that of Nina Simone, Antony Hegarty and his passionate vocal delivery to Edith Piaf.
Clementine’s music is famously incisive and poetic, mixing revolt with love, hope, rebellion and melancholy, sophisticated lyricism with slang and shouts, and rhyming verse with prose monologues. He is noticeably seen playing on stage entirely in black or dark grey long trench-like woolen coat with no shirt underneath, in bare feet.
Clementine’s first EP, Cornerstone, was released in June 2013 with three studio tracks. Andy Gill on the Independent album review wrote:
This debut EP offers a taste of one of 2014’s most promising new talents. With just Benjamin Clementine’s impulsive piano figures accompanying his dark, powerful voice, there’s a soulful solemnity about these searching songs. But there’s also a wealth of imagination at work.
Clementine initially wanted to record his debut album, At Least for Now straight after his first EP, but due to contractual dealings with the music industry and his label it was strategically held back for almost two years. During that time he decided to write his own dictionary, and wrote collections of poetry with one specific writing called Through the Eyes of a wild Greyhound and classical music pieces whilst waiting.
He boasts having more than 500 songs and losing a third by his vagabond way of living. In the course of this time he also had grander schemes for the regeneration of his little corner of North London – alluded to in another song, “Edmonton”, which will later appear on Glorious You, his second EP.
At Least for Now was mainly released across Europe on January 12, 2015. In February 2015 it reached the iTunes Top 10 in Italy, Holland, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg Poland and Greece. In France, it went number 1, has been certified Gold and has won a prestigious Victoires de la Musique (the French equivalent of the Grammys) award for best new artist.
At Least for Now is now available on iTunes and Amazon. You can also stream on Spotify.