BENJAMIN CLEMENTINE AT LEAST FOR NOW LP VINYL NEW MERCURY MUSIC WINNER 2015

North London newcomer Benjamin Clementine releases his debut album, At Least For Now. Continuing a journey which has taken Benjamin from busking around Paris to a debut performance on BBC2’s Later..with Jools Holland in 2013. Benjamin Clementine has packed a lot into his 25 years: heartbreak, homelessness, reinvention, before reaching cult status in Paris and returning home in unlikely circumstances. Raised in Edmonton, his household was a strictly religious one, where children were barred from the living room unless it was a weekend dinner ("my parents, even though they were quite devilish, acted like Christians, and we weren't allowed to play anything other than gospel music”). When Benjamin started to teach himself the keyboard aged 11, he stumbled upon classical radio rather than contemporary pop; a sparse piano solo by Erik Satie in particular transformed the way he played. At 16 years old, in a rare moment of permitted TV watching, he caught New York avant-gardists Antony and the Johnsons performing the disarmingly naked ‘Hope There’s Someone’ on the BBC. “I was confused, scared…it was another world,” says Clementine. “When it finished, I went back upstairs to my piano and started playing chords.”