Ewan Moore has announced his debut album, Halftone Paradise, arriving on November 13, and there’s already another taste of what’s coming. Greatest Line Dancer in Dunfermline follows recent single Terrified, bringing bagpipes, eighties references and a rather brilliant family story into the mix.
And perhaps we should have seen an album coming. “It may be becoming increasingly clear that there is a larger, more extensive and complete body of work on the way,” Moore recently shared on his socials. After the amount of music he’s been putting out, the clues were certainly there. Now we finally know where they were leading.
Greatest Line Dancer in Dunfermline takes its title from a semi-fictional account of Moore’s parents meeting at a dance, although the song itself began with a happy accident. While working at Thredd HQ, a temperamental Dave Smith OB-6 kept slipping out of tune and, at certain moments, sounded uncannily like bagpipes. Moore followed the idea, with a nod to the way Big Country’s Stuart Adamson once coaxed a similar sound from his guitar.
Moore’s parents are from Fife and went to school with Adamson, so what started with an unruly synth quickly found its way back home. Moore wrote the lyrics, apparently laughing through much of the process, before returning to his studio to record the rest, with Luke Marzec later joining on soprano saxophone and harmonies.
Halftone Paradise will show another side of that musical curiosity. Conceived as a record of two halves, it moves from Moore’s pop instincts into freer territory, making more room for improvisation and the jazz influences that have long been part of his world.
A drummer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Moore has worked with Jamie Isaac, Ruthven and Brooke Bentham, while his London residency NOISE champions emerging jazz and improvised music. But some of this new chapter goes much further back. Family visits to Dunfermline often ended around the piano, singing everything from traditional Scottish songs to The Beatles and Elton John. Now one of those family stories has become a song of its own. Not a bad way to introduce Halftone Paradise.
