Gareth Donkin

“They say home is where the heart is,” explains Gareth Donkin, “and this album is where my heart has been for the last four years. I’ve lived in six different places in two different countries during that time, but through it all, I always kept coming back to these songs.”

It should come as little surprise, then, that Donkin has named his extraordinary debut Welcome Home. Written and recorded in a series of bedroom studios in England and France, the album showcases the London-based 23-year-old’s stunning mix of instrumental virtuosity and emotional intuition, blending highly sophisticated melodic and harmonic craftsmanship with deeply moving lyrical explorations of longing, desire, and determination. The songs here draw on soul, funk, pop, yacht rock, hip-hop, jazz, and even bossa nova, hinting at times to everything from Michael Jackson and Bill Evans to George Benson and Jamiroquai, and Donkin’s performances are nothing short of mesmerizing, layering up instrument after instrument in the best one-man-band tradition of Prince or Stevie Wonder. The result is a moving work that’s equal parts brain and brawn, a masterful coming-of-age self-portrait from a young artist discovering himself—and his sound—one song at a time.

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