Last updated: 3 days ago
Chris Keats set fire to his old piano and left the music business, after a publishing company tried to blackmail him into signing a life-long contract. The cross-roads experience was poetically channelled into the bluesy eulogy Hourglass on his debut album Phoenix (2024). The album was conceived after a long creative hiatus, and otherwise focused on ”life after death”; meeting the love of his life had inspired him to start making music on his own terms, and he accepts no liability for the songs of his past.
The road had been windy. He had grown up on the edge of the North Sea in a small town where the winters were longer than the summers and the sky rarely blue. Music was his way to breathe, and he moved to London to build a career as a singer/songwriter but ended up as a clichéd struggling songwriter and indie producer.
Phoenix revealed his eclectic musical childhood inspirations – the Bruce Springsteen collection of his next-door neighbour who was a recovering alcoholic and retired boxer, and who encouraged Chris to start playing the guitar he had found in the street; the Clash album lent to him at the age of 7 by his sister's boyfriend; his brother's vintage Beatles and David Bowie albums; and the introduction to Leonard Cohen songs he got from a chain-smoking school librarian when borrowing a Bob Dylan songbook. In 2025, Chris released three covers paying tribute to past influences and announced the release of a second album in early 2026.
The road had been windy. He had grown up on the edge of the North Sea in a small town where the winters were longer than the summers and the sky rarely blue. Music was his way to breathe, and he moved to London to build a career as a singer/songwriter but ended up as a clichéd struggling songwriter and indie producer.
Phoenix revealed his eclectic musical childhood inspirations – the Bruce Springsteen collection of his next-door neighbour who was a recovering alcoholic and retired boxer, and who encouraged Chris to start playing the guitar he had found in the street; the Clash album lent to him at the age of 7 by his sister's boyfriend; his brother's vintage Beatles and David Bowie albums; and the introduction to Leonard Cohen songs he got from a chain-smoking school librarian when borrowing a Bob Dylan songbook. In 2025, Chris released three covers paying tribute to past influences and announced the release of a second album in early 2026.
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