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[ She'll Be Right Records / CD ]
Release Date: Tuesday, 24 July, 2007
Should this item be out of stock at the time of your order, we would expect to be able to supply it to you within 1 - 2 weeks.
This is gloriously affecting NZ indie pop which invites comparisons with Neil Young, Paul Simon or Bonnie “Prince” Billy...
You haven’t yet heard the name? That’s OK, Phil Johns is a bit of an enigma to most of us, even his friends. The NZ singer / songwriter crafts beautiful indie pop songs that are simple and catchy. When he performs them live he turns the audience into his disciples -- which explains his great success in Germany -- as first and foremost he is a live performer.
At first glance Johns looks like a builder or a sparky and on further inspection you'll find he is actually a builder. That’s how he ended up in Germany -- on a contract job building eco-houses. In the lunch breaks he would pull out his guitar and sing songs to his fellow builders until they encouraged him to try and go professional with his music.
Born and raised in Rotorua, Johns grew up around a lot of soul, blues and reggae music, and this still has a strong influence on his direction today. Johns is now 35, but he spent most of his 20s travelling the world. He's pretty much been everywhere. You could almost say the world is his home. Years ago while in India he met a fellow kiwi traveller who gave Johns a couple of CDs from back home. One of them was the underground classic ‘Shadows on a Flat Land’, the album produced by Jody Lloyd aka Trillion, and released on his She’ll Be Right Records label.
Johns really liked it a lot and it became his travelling companion and reminder of home. He always thought “If I ever make an album, I want with this guy to produce it”. And almost ten years later he did. In ‘06 he came back to NZ to record his debut “dream” album. He tracked most of the songs in Wellington and then sent them down to Jody Lloyd in Christchurch to work on and add extra players and sounds. ‘Illusion Fades Away’ is the fruit of the pair’s labours and it is something quite unlike any album you may have ever heard from NZ.
Tracks:
1. Love So Great
2. Illusion Fades Away
3. Inside Light
4. Come Into My Frame
5. Campfire Song
6. We All Win
7. Roots
8. So Amazing
9. The Grand Illusion
10. Wake Up
11. Copland Valley
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