Here’s the latest single from London-based blues singer-songwriter Ben Hemming. The well-shot video for ‘The Devil’s Dance’ finds Hemming walking and dancing through city streets at night while he sings of loss disillusionment and giving up on your dreams. It’s stirring stuff. The song’s beginning is full of atmosphere, with just Hemming’s bleak-sounding vocal over a stripped back acoustic guitar. Then, after this moody opening, drums from Lui Rampino and insistent bass from Stefan Redtenbacher kick in and deliver a real sense of urgency. Hemming says of ‘The Devil’s Dance’: “The song evolved from the opening cords, which mark a slightly different tone to previous tracks. There’s defiantly more of an Americana vibe with this one, with the acoustic guitar taking more of a central role.” Hemming once again recorded with James Welsh at Masterlink Productions, a studio in Send, a rural location just outside of Woking, UK. He says: “I feel I’ve found a fantastic working environment which on one hand enables me to have the confidence to push what I do, as well as providing security and familiarity in the working process.” That relaxed confidence is clear in his delivery of the well-written and engaging ‘The Devil’s Dance’.
This is the fourth single to be released from Hemming’s forthcoming EP ‘Resurrection’, which is due out in June 2023. This follows several well-received records, including his debut ‘Broken Man’, a collection written on the road in the American south. Hemming says of the new EP: “It’s really a record of hope, it uses metaphors of religion and the resurrection to deal with issues of masculinity and loss of self in a world now so deprived of meaning and purpose.” This is fine blues-tinged Americana – check it out.
