Let's drop the postmodern irony, the pretenses at objectivity, and all the other music-critic smarts. The music which Karl Broadie makes - as captured on his debut proper as a singer-songwriter, Nowhere Now Here - is magic. And it's the truth, in al [+]Let's drop the postmodern irony, the pretenses at objectivity, and all the other music-critic smarts. The music which Karl Broadie makes - as captured on his debut proper as a singer-songwriter, Nowhere Now Here - is magic. And it's the truth, in all the dazzling simplicity with which the truth sometimes presents itself in our lives - suddenly, mysteriously, as if from nowhere.
There are those who unfailingly bring you into their world with each word they sing. Jeff Tweedy and Bob Dylan and Lucinda Williams and Neil Young and Townes Van Zandt are a kind of landscape of their own, their voices an open invitation to enter that world whenever you choose. And Karl Broadie is like that, too. Karl's voice has ache and it has immediacy and it has soul, and it has the simple, plainspoken conviction of someone who is telling the truth.
If Karl Broadie has a strong philosophical bent, perhaps he was born to it. The 30-year-old Scottish expat, now living in Sydney, was born in Edinburgh to a family of philosophers, artists and free-thinkers. His father is an Oxford-educated painter, his mother a dance teacher.
Karl's introduction to the music industry occurred when he was offered the chance to do work experience in a London recording studio. Karl's first day on the job saw him in the studio with famed Eurhythmics producer, Mark Freegard. As a T-boy (tape op) he was soon breathing the same stale studio air as Bananarama, Big Audio Dynamite, Maxi Priest and the Fine Young Cannibals. This last band must have taken a liking the young studio apprentice, since their multi-million selling album, The Raw and the Cooked affectionately credits Karl Broadie as "executive engineer".
Still, his mind was elsewhere, on the songwriting, which would soon become his main concern. Karl's personal philosophy can be most succinctly expressed in the song, which ended up being the title track of his debut. "The song Nowhere Now Here was just... everything brought together. It's cause and effect, the simple philosophy of remembering that you are never nowhere -- you are always now here."
Karl still works full-time in the music business, although he has a musician's instinctive distrust towards the machinations of the industry. "Even though I've always appreciated
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