Doya Beardmore wants to sound like no one has ever sounded before. “That’s the pursuit,” he says, perched on the edge of a squeaky leather sofa in an east London café. “What’s the point if someone else has already done it?”
Born in Johannesburg and raised in Doncaster, the 33-year-old is an easy conversationalist. He is tall, too, with long limbs all the better for stretching into those vast worlds of hip-hop, indie, soul, reggae, folk, blues, avant-pop, electronic rock, and dub. His roaming second album Hardly the Same Snake chucks all of the above into a blender and spits out tracks that sound both familiar and alien. Certainly, more familiar now that Beardmore has a Glastonbury gig in his back pocket, which he is now following up with a UK headline tour this month. Iggy Pop is a fan of his and Grace Jones, too. Gilles Peterson, who discovered Beardmore in 2019, signed him to his label soon after. And when Beardmore made the decision to step out on his own for his second release, it wasn’t long until that album too, was snatched up by Partisan Records, home also to Ezra Collective, Laura Marling, and Fontaines DC.
