"You expected Charli xcx to drop one of the British pop albums of the year – rather less so a bloke from Rotherham”
Ben Beaumont-Thomas, The Guardian
The culmination of 30 years of music-making, Karl D’Silva’s debut album of alt-pop songs, Love Is A Flame In The Dark, draws inspiration from years of collaborations with boundary-pushing experimental artists, as well as the pioneering electronic pop music of D’Silva’s native South Yorkshire. Released via Glasgow’s Night SchoolRecords in October 2024, the album was met with critical acclaim, including being named an album of the year by both The Wire magazine and The Guardian.Raised in a household where music was constantly played, D’Silva began learning the first of many instruments– the guitar – at the age of 8, and would go on to make his name as a saxophonist in the UK’s experimental music scene. Over the last 20 years he has worked with artists including Ex Easter Island Head, Oren Ambarchi,Stephen Mallinder of Cabaret Voltaire and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. As a solo artist and collaborator he has performed at venues including Cafe OTO, the ICA and The White Hotel, and at UK festivals including Supersonic Festival, Sounds From The Other City, and ACID HORSE.
D’Silva embarked upon what would become Love Is A Flame In The Dark with a Joseph Conrad quote taped to the wall behind his speakers: “It was written that I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice”. The album was written, performed, produced and recorded entirely by D’Silva from 2021–2023, with D’Silva using a diverse range of self-played instruments – guitar, fretless bass, modular, analog and software synths, woodwind, organ/keys, drumpad and noiseboxes – to bring the sounds he heard in his head to life. Mixed with Ross Halden at HOHM Recording Studio in Bradford, the album is welded to a love for artists as diverse as Prince, The Human League, Arthur Russell, Nine Inch Nails, SOPHIE, Miles Davis and Wolf Eyes, but with a melodic andanthemic sensibility all D’Silva’s own.
D’Silva used a photograph of a demolished and destroyed building in his hometown of Rotherham as a constant visual reference during the recording process. His ambition for the album was to make something that sounded like that photo looked: to hallucinate visions, dreams and nightmares in his mind’s eye; to create lyrics reflecting the full spectrum of emotions about life in the 2020s, from the deepest despair to the highest rapture; and to setthese words to crystal-clear melodies singing from out of the darkness. Love Is A Flame In The Dark is a sound- world filled with beautiful and ugly possibilities of what D’Silva imagined a maximalist modern pop music could sound like, where every song is shot through with an undercurrent of broken industrial decay and disgustingly filthy noise.
