Maximilian

Local troubadour, Maximilian, brings his cinematic balladry from out of the bedroom and surging into wide-screen, panoramic life on the highly affecting 'surrender' After three years, three house-moves, numerous rewrites, headaches and changes of heart, the end result of all this blood and sweat is 'Surrender' - a ‘bedroom’ record in theory, but in practice sounding like anything but.

Here, ‘Bedroom’ is a misleading term, not just because the drums were recorded in Feighan’s living room in Brighton (even though literally every other voice or instrument was) but because the music of Surrender sounds richer and more far-reaching than anything that could be possibly contained within four walls; some moments on the album, take balladic ‘Red Wine’, have a kind of sonic full-blown panorama that would make the likes of Grizzly Bear blush.

“Though it was done in DIY Fashion”, Feighan bluntly states, “The aim was for a high quality professional outcome”. Using every bit of knowledge garnered from his music production degree, many a low-budget microphone was begged for or borrowed, many a part was rigorously edited - recorded, re-recorded, re-written, recorded again - across various rooms, by various people, over a mammoth two year period. Across 'Surrender', you hear a record packed to the hilt with emotion, with all its haunting harmonies, sky-surfing rock riffs, avalanching drums and pained lyricism ostensibly primed for a deluge of tears to come in its wake. But Feighan, crucially, is all too self-aware by how overblown this must seem. In his own words, his Maximilian persona adopts the “main character energy” of “walking through a town while hungover”, to express sentiments both deeply private, yet drenched in a cinematic sense of escapism: “The songs are very personal and all drawn from real experience, but totally dramatised and blown up”, notes Feighan. “ I’m often inspired by poetry, novels and films. “I have often felt inspired to write after watching a good movie,” he adds.

While 'Surrender', without a doubt, is a solo record, with all Feighan’s life poured into it, it’s also a record which provides yet another emblem, if any more was needed, of the shining light that is Brighton’s nurturing, supportive grassroots community. While born and raised in the channel island of Jersey, relocating to study, live, and now work in Brighton was an essential event to Feighan’s musical development. With local producers Ally Jowlett (Porchlight) and Bobby Smyth (Hutch), providing key assistance in the album’s creation - and Brighton scenester Jamie Broughton close collaborator in the recording process - Members of fellow Brighton up-and-comers Flip Top Head and Van Zon, notably play in Maximilian’s full strength six-piece line-up: “The Brighton scene has helped this album so much”, he notes, “ the people I met who ended up on this album are all so talented. In times of frustration I had so many great musician friends to lean on who showed me support the whole way. 'Surrender' wouldn’t be the same without them.”