At an old-school sixteen tracks, ‘Oxymoron’ sees Nik back to his lyrical best following a step away from the limelight to concentrate on home life and writing/demoing what would eventually become this latest album release.
The first single to be taken from the new album is ‘From Cloudy Bay To Malibu’ – getting its exclusive first play on Ken Bruce’s huge BBC Radio 2 audience this morning and released on Friday 11th September. A song about a wife/girlfriend packing her bags and leaving, with the bereft man in question finding a bar and embarking on a journey, travelling the world via the medium of alcoholic beverages.
On writing the album, Nik commented “I’ve been writing songs for the best part of fifty years. It doesn’t get any easier. The creative energy gets lower as the quality control bar gets higher. There is no blind confidence of youth, just the knowing self-doubt of age. Most songs fell by the wayside. 16 made it through. I’m proud of each and every one of them.”
Recording this new material at Abbey Road Studios marked a return to a location with a lot of history for Nik. The room where this album was recorded was the same one in which he recorded ‘The One and Only’ with Chesney Hawkes. At Abbey Road, Nik says, “You get the best studios, the best engineers, the best string section, the best brass players – and they bring everything together, with the mixing, to make [the record] sound like it’s all come from the same place.”
Oxymoron will be released on Friday 16th October 2020 digitally, on CD, double gatefold vinyl with a very limited edition coloured gatefold vinyl being released also and is available to pre-order NOW!
