This week’s Songbay Featured Artist: Daniel Hall via @songbayteam @danhallmusic1
FEATURED Artist:
This week’s featured artist:
Daniel Hall
Daniel is a musician, lyricist, songwriter and designer based in Sydney, Australia. A prolific songwriter, he specialises in contemporary, pop, electro, house and new wave music. He has a reputation for writing beautifully well crafted pop songs with catchy melodies, strong chord progressions, poignant lyrics and stunning audio/visual production techniques. It is clear he has been influenced by and continues to build upon the work of the greats of these genres – Depeche Mode, Erasure, The Beloved, The Presets, Camouflage, De/Vision, The Human League, The Lightning Seeds, OMD, Ultravox, Mesh, A-Ha, New Order, Thomas Dolby, etc. If you like any of these artists, you will greatly appreciate the work of Daniel Hall.
CV/History
Daniel has released six albums to date which have all have been in the top 10 of the Reverbnation Australian electronica charts. His latest single ‘One Reason’, from the new 2015 album ‘Romantic Tendencies’, was awarded a noteworthy commendation from the prestigious UK Songwriting Competition and ranked in the top 20% of all entries submitted.
One of the striking aspects of Daniel’s work are the stunning videos which accompany his compositions. These are clearly integral to the composition and not the usual commercial ‘addons’ that we’ve come to accept from the pop industry over the years.
Here is an example of Daniel’s audio/visualization technique and stunning contemporary dance choreography:
BIOGRAPHY
“Music has been a labour of love since I was a child. Having been brought up in a home where my father always had music playing, it left an indelible mark on me. In the early 80’s, my father would bring back from his overseas trips, cassette tapes of new pop groups and this got me hooked. Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, Heaven 17, Human League, Tears for Fears. Who could not like this stuff! I started saving my pocket money and bought as many records and tapes as I could. As a teenager, I saved up for a nice stereo unit and keyboard whilst working in the holidays. I dabbled around making some of my own material on a 4 track mixer and mike. I released my first album in 1992 and entered an 89FM music competition where I was runner up at which time I received a bit of NZ radio airplay. With the family moving from the UK to South Africa and then NZ, plus travel and work commitments, there was a hiatus of creating but I never lost the passion. I then moved to Australia with a job offer.
Technology has had a massive effect in the music industry and in 2012 I and started to work on new material which was so much easier to do than in the past. I created a new instrumental album to see if I still had the knack. With alot of encouragement from family and friends I decided to do a proper album and test the old vocals out and released “Deep Down” in August 2013. To my amazement it reached No.4 in the Australian Reverbnation electronica charts! Picking up 150 fans on Radio Jango and some good sales and reviews on Amazon, I decided to keep the creative juices flowing. Over a period of a year and a half, I then released “Evoke”, “Magnum Opus” and ‘Dizzy Heights” giving me in excess of of 100 tracks and about 1000 fans across a number of websites. God knows where I found the time with a full-time job but the ideas just kept coming. I then decided to do a “Best Of” album and in June 2015 and “Light & Dark” was released as a boxed light up USB and is my most successful album to date. I still had some unfinished tracks in the vault and went back to listen to them again and felt I had few catchy tunes I could work on. The creative juices started flowing again and 6 months later I released “Romantic Tendencies”. The first single “One Reason” has been by far my most successful single to date and was awarded a commendation by the 2015 UK Songwriting Competition. I narrowly missed out by 1 point to reach the final round but was more than happy to be in the top 20% of all entries submitted across all genres. Influences from my favourite artists are still apparent and the album has been mastered by Tom Eales a well known London DJ including an awesome remix of the second single “Soul Saver”. I also started to dabble in film making and have released 8 videos on the new album. I find the visuals really help tell the story of each track. I have just begun work on a new album for 2016 and decided to become a Songbay member. I had nothing to lose and after only 1 day of signing up I received a message from a female vocalist asking if I was interested in a collaboration as she enjoyed my work. I was working on a track called “Peace” and thought to myself that this song was perfect for a female vocalist. Coincidence or fate? Both I think. I sung the lyrics and sent her the track to copy, along with some direction. The results speak for themselves and I think this is probably the best track and video that I have done. I intend to submit it to numerous competitions in 2016. The songwriting seems to come naturally to me when I am working on a tune. A few key words come out and then I build the song and story around that. It is my subconscious working and with my life experiences through the years, good or bad, it makes for great writing material. I find it quite therapeutic and in some instances find closure from past events. A lot of my songs resonate with other people who have had similar experiences. So stay tuned for a big new album release sometime in 2016.”
To contact or purchase the work of Daniel Hall, See his artist page on Songbay: Daniel Hall on Songbay
