David Allred - The Cell (2019) Hi Res

Following on from last year's acclaimed debut with Erased Tapes The Transition — named #17 album of the year by The Sunday Times — Californian singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist David Allred returns with The Cell, a mini album released on June 14.

Meant as a companion piece to The Transition, The Cell picks up where The Transition left off, with David continuing the search to find his place in the world. “The Cell is about warmly acknowledging the darkness in our individual lives as a strategic method of gaining a deeper understanding of how to move forward in a vastly dissonant world with optimism, harmony and light.”

Opening with the title track, The Cell immediately draws us into David’s unique world of storytelling, displaying his peculiar skill of weaving feelings and characters with wandering melodies. The five-minute opener peaks with David’s emotional falsetto repeating “In the mind”, acting as an alarm call for himself and his surroundings. Lead track Nature’s Course finds David delving deeper into existential questions about the human condition and its relation to nature, set to a gentle, melancholy piano ballad.

“Nature’s Course is a feeling pertaining to the way our subjective human experience is subconsciously directly related to the slow steady pace of nature and our ability to cope with our inner struggles accordingly” explains David.

The Cell further cements David’s place among the American songwriting tradition, from the slow methodical spacey instrumental Mandatory Soul to the poetic solo piano number Family and the dense and continuous Lexington Hills. With each piece we are transported to David’s unusual but rich and textured little world.

Hailing from Loomis, a small town outside of Sacramento, via Portland, Oregon – David worked as a sound engineer and session musician, featuring on multiple recordings by the likes of Birger Olsen, Brigid Mae Power, Brumes, The Beacon Sound Choir, Chantal Acda, Heather Woods Broderick, Jung Body, Masayoshi Fujita, and many more. He quickly found himself touring Europe with Peter Broderick, culminating in a Royal Festival Hall performance, and contributing the arresting voice and double bass piece Ahoy to the Erased Tapes 10th anniversary box set 1+1=X.