Baxter Dury + Joshua Idehen

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Image courtesy of Razzmatazz

Joshua Idehen, a British man of Nigerian descent (and resident in Sweden), is a spoken word artist, poet, and musician with roots in the British jazz and electronic music scene. His poems appear on The Comet Is Coming's album Channel the Spirit (which was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2016) and on Sons Of Kemet's albums Your Queen Is a Reptile and Black Is the Future (winner of a MOBO Award in 2021). He also formed the spiritual jazz group Calabashed with Alabaster DePlume and collaborated with Los Angeles electronica maestro Daedelus on the acclaimed mini-album Holy Water Over Sons (2021) and with Metronomy, with whom he released the track "With Balance" in 2024. Since 2011, he has released six albums under his own name, with Learn To Swim: A Mixtape (2023) being the most recent. His latest release is the remix EP Mum Does The Washing (Remixes).

Meanwhile, fellow Brit Baxter Dury has named his upcoming tour the Allbarone Tour for his new album Allbarone. The idea for it began on June 28, 2024, just after Dury finished his performance at the Glastonbury Festival. Renowned producer Paul Epworth approached him, saying he was thrilled with the concert and would like to work with him. And so it was. One thing led to another and in November they met at Epworth's North London Church Studios to begin working on Dury's eighth album.

There, in intense three-hour shifts every day during December and January, they both devised the nine tracks that make up the album, building Dury's most melodically direct and futuristic collection of songs. “Actually, Epworth is more than just genius. It's like he's telepathic or something; he sees music in a way that nobody else does, at least not among the people I've met. He doesn't care what you think; he just wants the result to be brilliant. If it isn't, he throws it in the trash,” Dury said of his producer.

Considered one of the most ingenious and incisive songwriters of his time, Dury (who is the son of Ian Dury) had his first taste of fame at the age of five, when he posed for the cover of his father's album New Boots and Panties!! (1977). Even then, he was accustomed to life on the road, accompanying his father's pub-rock band, Kilburn & The High Roads, later renamed Ian Dury & The Blockheads. But despite this springboard, he hasn't relied on being "the son of" in his career, preferring to escape that shadow and be valued for his work. He has achieved this by telling ironic and insightful stories, mostly about wealthy people who embrace libertine behavior, which he sings about with an expressionless voice enveloped in chamber pop arrangements and the edgy approach of new wave.

Since 2002, when his first LP, Len Parrot's Memorial Lift, was released, he has amassed eight albums, the latest (until Allbarone) being I Thought I Was Better than You (2023), in addition to about fifteen more tracks including singles, EPs and remixes. Although he has dabbled in various genres—disco in Prince of Tears (2017), dance in BED (2018), and hip hop in the aforementioned I Thought I Was Better than You—the characteristic melodic accent of his songs never falters nor does his wit and biting humor.

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