Search Results for:

AMATEUR BEST

Amateur Best

They Know - Inc. Richard Norris Remixes

“Glistening synth-pop number” - Dummy

“This track is the highest grade of electronic pop” - i-D

'They Know' combines pop vocals, synth textures and clipped garage beats, while exclusive track 'White Noise' shuffles along on electro rhythms. Richard Norris is brought in for the remix, utilising his know how as the Grid for a house remix of 'They Know'.

Amateur Best is the alias of Birmingham-based “personal pop” musician, songwriter and producer Joe Flory.

His second album ‘The Gleaners’ was released via Brille Records (The Knife, Gwilym Gold, John Wizards).

‘They Know’ follows the release of single ‘Marzipan’ which picked up radio support from Radio 1’s Annie Mac and Huw Stephens and XFM’s John Kennedy and Eddy Temple Morris.




TRACK LISTING

They Know
White Noise
They Know (Richard Norris Remix)


Amateur Best

The Gleaners

Amateur Best is the alias of Birmingham-based ‘personal pop’ musician, songwriter and producer Joe Flory.

After releasing debut album ‘No Thrills’ via Double Denim Records (Empress Of, Tei Shi, Kero Kero Bonito) in 2013, Amateur Best returns with ‘The Gleaners’, his second full length, via Brille Records (The Knife, Gwilym Gold, John Wizards).

The result of three years writing and recording, the 10 tracks that make up ‘The Gleaners’ straddle the fine line between outright ecstasy and muted melancholy. Initially envisioned as a concept album about a charity shop-bought doll’s house, it mutated into a full-on dance record.

‘The Gleaners’ is testament both to Flory’s commitment to making music on his own terms and to the sheer joys of making music full stop.

TRACK LISTING

Rely
19
The Double
Marzipan
They Know
Part Timer
Hey Darlin'
Nightshifter
Leviathan
No Sleep

Amateur Best

No Thrills

No Thrills is the proper debut record of Joe Flory. It's been a long time coming from a man we now know as Amateur Best and some may remember as Primary 1. The music is autobiographical, romantic and undeniably poppy. Indeed, he describes his songwriting as primarily informed by a lifelong fascination with pop music, from early encounters with Michael Jackson cassettes when he was growing up in Singapore, to discovering the more inventive strains of pop we've been spoiled with over the past decade.

Flory describes his connection to pop as an intensely personal one too. Back in Singapore it helped shaped his relationship with music and even his own identity as Flory found himself obsessing over a British pop scene that was happening 6000 miles away. He never saw those favourites live, instead cherishing the recordings and using them to stay in touch with the country he came from.

Not that this relationship has always been cosy. The Amateur Best project itself was born partly from Flory's own frustration with the form. After an aborted attempt at making a pop album for a major label as Primary 1 he had lost all interest in making music. So instead of writing songs Flory decided to start documenting his thoughts in a series of online comics. Those strange, quirky comics were eventually released alongside 7" singles on London label Double Denim and became something of a healing process. In Joe's words "I wanted to see if I could make a story that was fictional, but reflected some of my own experiences. What's brilliant about doing something I am a total amateur at is that a lot of subconscious things come out in a very pure way". Those violent, funny and disarming comics helped Flory re-think the music. No Thrills isn't a concept album but the energy and passion spent on the comics certainly helped inspire and drive the music to the point reached on the debut Amateur Best record.

Considering its genesis the record could easily have been a hard luck story but Flory sees it as a very positive album and an honest one too. He describes it as "about growing up and losing a lot of my dreams, but in the process also losing a lot of my illusions too. A lot of my romantic notions about love and life have been stripped over the past couple of years, but what I'm left with are things I really care about".

The smart, inventive pop music of No Thrills is testament to the fun Flory had rediscovering his muse. From the squeaking saxophone that proceeds the gorgeous, lilting melodies in Too Much (featuring Nick Hunt of Outfit on guitar) to the bouncy, cartoon pop of Pleased. There are darker patches, but even the record's most depressed moment Get Down sounds like it takes place on a fairground ride.

A few friends helped out too, including Chilly Gonzales, who appears on Ready For The Good Life. Flory had played drums for Gonzales live and they were hanging out in Paris listening to some of Chilly's new material. He describes the collaboration as almost instantaneous from there: "I played Ready for the Good Life to Chilly and asked if he could try some chords over it. He literally turned back to the piano, pressed record and did two takes. I used both of them."

The release of No Thrills on Double Denim Records marks an end and a beginning for Flory. It's the album he felt he'd been making in his head for years but sees its release as the start of something even bigger and more exciting. Each of his short comic books came labelled as chapters, and while No Thrills has no such attendum it's hard not to think of it as the first of many more to come from a supremely gifted songwriter and story-teller.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ready For The Good Life
2. Too Much
3. Villas
4. The Wave
5. Pleased
6. In Time
7. Walk In Three
8. Be Happy
9. Get Down
10. No Thrills


Latest Pre-Sales

167 NEW ITEMS

E-newsletter —
Sign up
Back to top