Puzzle Muteson

Puzzle Muteson is the alter ego of an enigmatic songwriter from the Isle of Wight, rendering his music in a tremulous tenor over a finely spun web of fingerpicked guitar. Born in London’s Isle of Dogs, the southern English island provided unexpected shelter for the shuddering transformation into one-man band Puzzle Muteson. His grade-school music teacher was first to recognise his unrivalled vibrato, and a little while later a parade of chance and coincidence led him to inhabit Puzzle Muteson, and start shaping a body of songs.

His debut album, En Garde, was arranged and produced by Valgeir Sigurdsson and Nico Muhly and was released on the Bedroom Community label. The songs on the album are a characteristic collection of odd and beautiful stories – about love and horses, rust and polar bears, heartbreak and birds. A subsequent album, Theatrics, was also released by Bedroom Community.

After a long silence, Puzzle Muteson reappears somewhere else.

His upcoming album, Mechanical Kiss, is not quite a return, not quite a continuation. It is a one-off collaborative record made in a different climate, under a different voltage: the eerie coastal light of the Isle of Wight displaced by Bangkok’s concrete heat, raw air, sleepless movement and dense nocturnal rhythm.

Puzzle's vocals were written and recorded there, away from the familiar weather of Ryde. What had once seemed tied to salt, hills, birds, rust, horses, and trembling guitar now found itself surrounded by traffic haze, humid rooms, hard surfaces, low frequencies and the strange tenderness of distance.

The album releases on 16th October.