405 reasons to check this out!
Arthur Valentine is an alternative R&B/pop artist and producer hailing from Cork, who currently resides in London. He is the creative force behind his music, taking charge of the entire process from writing and recording to producing. Collaborating with his two roommates and fellow Hausu founders, Actualacid and Automatic Blue, Arthur has established Hausu, an artist collective based in Ireland that he co-founded with other talented individuals a few years ago.
Drawing inspiration from prominent artists such as Frank Ocean, Dijon, Caroline Polachek, and Omar Apollo, Arthur Valentine’s musical style reflects a fusion of these influences, shaping his unique sound. Since his debut in 2019, Arthur has been consistently releasing his music, including a series of singles and an EP titled “Splitscreen,” showcasing his creative growth and artistry.
The words of Arthur Valentine for Voidmagazines All Rights Reserved © Void Magazines
405 was a track that was written and recorded last year. The track came about when one of the co-producers, Jack (aka Actualacid) sent me a beat he had thrown together. The beat was called “AVQuickTune2” and it was the skeleton that we built 405 around. As with most of my songs, I wrote the melody first and the lyrics followed. Writing and recording the track was incredibly fun and creative, it came from a place I had never really drawn from before. However, there was one agonizing aspect of the song that we couldn’t get right – the intro vocal. This section was the first thing I had written and I had an idea in my head of how I wanted it to sound. Despite this, I couldn’t translate it from my head to the recording. I must’ve recorded it 100 hundred times but it never sounded exactly how I wanted it to. After weeks of revisiting the track, I had the idea to send it to my friend Alex Gough and have him take a crack at it. He sent me back his first take and it was exactly what I had heard in my head – it’s also what you hear on the released track.
405 reflects on a period of time I spent living in Vancouver, Canada. The lyrics highlight the lifestyle I was living at the time – a very minimalist, bare-bones, carefree way of living. It reminisces on the times spent skating around the city or to Kitsilano Beach to spend all day doing nothing in bliss. The track itself was written at a time when I felt an awful lot of pressure and weight from external sources as if I was being crushed by the weight of the world. Making 405 acted as a way to escape that pressure and contextualize things a bit. I mean, it’s hard not to feel more upbeat when those drums kick in.
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