London based musician Peter Conway is upsetting all the right apple carts and is as bright, heretic and unusual as any artist these shores have produced this century. Less of the reference points and more of the passion, less of the 'I know where this is going' and more of the unexpected. His voice has a dark, brooding, intensity and when he sings it feels like you are holding something close to your heart. You will not want to let go.

There’s an air of serendipity surrounding Peter Conway. Amazingly, he was discovered whilst serenading his nascent manager’s wife under a tree in West Hampstead. Furthermore and more bizarrely still, at the very moment Peter signed his music publishing to Sony/ATV, that same manager thought he recognised a motorcyclist scooting past and it turned out that he did. Several months later, Charlie Rapino (that same motorcyclist) signed him a record deal.

Musically Peter is unique and through his songs and voice has the ability to communicate deepest feelings and emotions. Peter has been working with Joe Zook (One Republic, Katy Perry), Chris Kimsey (Rolling Stones), Ben Thomas  (Newton Faulkner) and Ian Davenport (Radiohead, Supergrass) on creating songs of shattering depth and substance. Tracks that have an instant, classic feel, like something you have had on your record player for years.

Peter deals in universal themes like love and fear: songs Angels Inside and More Than A Million are all about Peter’s love for his young son, whilst I Am Not A Yes Man and Chains are about keeping strong in the face of adversity. The latter (released as part of Chains The EP, in the summer of 2008)) is a case in point: it bemoans the big brother behemoths who constrain our freedoms of speech and the walls he has to walk through to ‘break these chains’. Interestingly, the other tracks on Chains The EP also deal with love and fear: Arms Of Mine (featured in the forthcoming Arts Council-financed film Love Me Still) tackles love; Innocence (featuring a gorgeous Rhodes organ and beautiful guitar harmonics) embraces the fear of achievement and one’s own capabilities; whereas Trouble actually juxtaposes them both:
Have you seen the world today?
Talk about trouble
Where is the love?
Where is the love?

Bring Me is one of Peter’s stand-out works. This could be a hymn or a prayer and is a song (written comparatively recently) that Peter admits he couldn’t have written at any other/younger stage of his life,
Bring me a song that I can sing, a song to mend my broken wings
Bring me a light so I can’t hide, a space that’s safe for me to cry
Bring me a government that’s sane, a world without suffering or pain
Bring me the fortitude of mind, a love that is not blind

Peter apocalyptically intones these words as if his life depends on them and continues,
Bring me a life that is not staged, the strength to be myself each day
Bring me to understand the pain, the wisdom to learn from my mistakes
Bring me a drug that I can take, a drug where my mind won’t break
Bring me a god that I can know, a place inside that fear won’t go.

If this song doesn’t close Peter’s debut album (set for release later this year) then it should do, for herein Peter has come full circle; fear has been abandoned and the love song reinvented as a secular requiem.

One might suspect that with Peter’s debut album imminent and Peter’s recorded output so strong, studio trickery would have won out, with smoke and mirrors to the fore - but you’d be wrong: Peter is a revelation live and as comfortable in front of thirty or 3,000 people as he is in front of a microphone and a mixing desk. In fact, Peter often performs live without a microphone; his voice is simply powerful enough on it’s own. He has been on the road for the best part of two years and it is here more than anywhere that his songs come frighteningly to life. Peter is also fiercely principled, setting up the largely independent Rainbow Hill Records and releasing the Consequences of Freedom EP well before the other elements of his deal were in place. This is something that is continuing with the release of his debut album, a record that will surface with a Rainbow Hill Records imprint.

Peter Conway is a special artist. He has a song about dressing up for sex and getting off your face (Honey) and another spiritual, almost gospel song about our hunger for love and friendship (Let It Rain) and I can’t think of many artists (apart from, perhaps, Leonard Cohen and the freedom encapsulated in an artist like Dylan) lyrically who encompass such divergent emotions and thought processes. He’s funny too – something you will discover when you meet him – and that should be celebrated. These are strange days indeed but Peter Conway is the sound of someone hitting the ground running.