Musically, South Yorkshire has been a region that has historically punched above its weight, one of the country’s great producers of artistic iconoclasts. The 70s’ greatest jazz guitarist, John McLaughlin, was kicking around the streets of Donny before he took his skronk across the pond, whilst Threads-era Sheffield was the backdrop for The Human League, Cabaret Voltaire and Clock DVA as they crafted a form of tetchy synthesiser music that thoroughly inverted the saccharine pop music of the era.
Rotherham’s Karl D’Silva fits perfectly into this lineage, somewhere at the waypoint between McLaughlin, Cab Voltaire and pre-and-post-schism Human League. He cut his teeth as a virtuoso alto sax player and guitarist, collaborating live with the likes of Damo Suzuki, Thurston Moore and Oren Ambarchi, and playing in bands like Trumpets Of Death and Drunk In Hell. But it is on debut solo LP Love Is A Flame In The Dark that he is able to really spread his wings.
Recorded at home in Rotherham between 2021 and 2023, the mood on Love Is A Flame In The Dark is hopeful and often cathartic. It is the sound of one of experimental music’s wild-eyed talents emerging from a tough lockdown period, with a renewed sense of optimism and lust for life.
He crafts his own kind of post-industrial pop here, one where beauty is pulled from detritus and a steely palette of cold synths, drum machines and metallic guitars are used to create uncharacteristically bright music. Every time the isolated synthesisers or squalling saxophones get too dark – like the opening track ‘On The Outside’ – D’Silva finds a way to reach euphoria in the darkness.
Throughout, this sounds like the product of a world where Prince was born and lived his whole life in a Northern English town. The thumping percussion and glitterbomb guitar licks of ‘Entropy’, the mutant disco of ‘Flowers Start To Cry’ and end times synth bass of the title track are testament to this, whilst D’Silva’s regular flourishes of virtuosity on the sax colour in the soundscapes bright purple.
Love Is A Flame In The Dark is an accomplished debut solo album that fits perfectly into the pantheon of iconoclast pop from South Yorkshire. Karl D’Silva, here, dreams of a world in his image, where the pop music is technicolour and positively bustling with ideas, and the results are utterly charming and life-affirming. After a career of A List experimental collaborations, he is now joyously bounding down his own path.
