Tom Fleming, AKA One True Pairing, has unveiled a new single and video, which you can watch above. The beautiful and elegiac ‘Frozen Food Centre’, produced by John Murphy, is a departure from the more rock-focussed debut solo album from the former Wild Beast, with folk-inspired guitar and an appearance from Cormac MacDiarmada of Lankum on banjo. “There’s a Chris Marker quote, ‘I have been around the world several times, and now only banality interests me’," Tom Fleming told his label Domino Records. “Places that aren’t on the map and may not ever be. Well-kept gardens, ring roads, clusters of identical houses. Ghouls ten years your senior seeping out of the cracks. They know your name and your habits, drifting under the floodlights in the car park.” The video, by Richard Dawson-collaborator James Hankins, is a powerful short film about struggling to survive in the grey expanses of everywhere Britain. Speaking of the video, Fleming said, "The heroism and resilience of people constantly amaze me, how rich their lives are and how little we see of them. You never really escape your fate. Not really. Thank you to James Hankins for creating this for me.” ‘Frozen Food Centre’ comes ahead of more new music from Fleming soon and we dropped him a line to find out more:
Tom, what have you been up to of late?
Tom Fleming: I’ve been living a quiet life with my partner Jenny, who has helped me put my head back together a bit, find focus, address flaws, that sort of thing. A life’s work!
‘Frozen Food Centre’ feels like quite a musical departure for you, what has inspired that?
TF: The world is not the same as it was in 2019, and if anything it is several shades darker. This song is bigger in scope and it’s more alive and off the grid. I’ve been listening to a lot of acoustic music lately and trying to dive a bit deeper into that. It’s been a five year gap so my radio has been retuned.
How did you end up working with Cormac MacDiarmada from Lankum?
TF: John Murphy thought Cormac could provide something unexpected, something between the notes. Cormac did stuff I never would have dreamed of, he’s a stunning and inspired player. John assembled an amazing cast of musicians to bring this to life, from different disciplines and with different talents.
How did the collaboration with James Hankins on the video come about?
TF: I was aware of James’ work and from his idea for the video, it was clear that he got what I meant by the song, and he stayed away from music video cliche expertly. I had one call with him and it was decided. I actually met him years ago in Bristol when we played a show together – he seemed surprised I remembered the name of his band.
What was the brief?
TF: I wanted to capture things that were mundane, but had an element of fantasy and dream about them. It would have to be quite a long piece and I trusted him to sustain attention over that long, to pace it well and not fight for the viewer’s attention. I wanted there to be a sort of stasis, if that makes any sense at all – he knew exactly what I was talking about.
It’s striking how the built environment and places that the character inhabits are so everywhere generic modern Britain – was that a deliberate prompt?
TF: You betcha. It has long been a frustration of mine that so much in life doesn’t get articulated or honoured the way it should, that there are things that art or music or whatever "should" be about. The older I get the more interested I am in mundane stuff. Once you start looking, you can’t stop seeing.
Is ‘Frozen Food Centre’ indicative of where the next album will be heading?
TF: We’re off the grid and off the one, plugged out and playing gently. It is, however, supposed to be a heavyweight record, and a sparse one. We went in to make a folk record and did not do that.
