Some records feel like they were made for late-afternoon light. Victor Davies’ new single ‘Be The One’ is one of those. It lands with the easy warmth of his early Compost days, the kind of mid-summer groove that makes you want the windows open and the volume a little higher than usual.
The track sits right in the pocket of neo-soul and Latin pop: lovely, catchy, and unhurried. You can hear the lineage that first put Davies on Jazzanova-Compost-Records — acoustic-leaning soul, a little jazz in the corners, and that Latin pulse that never feels like a costume. It is not trying to shout over the season. It just sits in it. Compost has also included two sun-drenched deep house remixes from Japan’s M-Scape and Yoshi Horino, which stretch the same melody into something you can keep playing after the sun goes down. Spanish and Portuguese versions are due this autumn, which makes sense for an artist who has always treated language and rhythm as part of the same conversation.
Davies is a London-born multidisciplinary artist — musician, producer, filmmaker, painter — born to an English mother and a Sierra Leonean father. That mix has been in the work from the start. He picked up music at fourteen after watching a family friend from the ’80s soul group Central Line play guitar in the living room. Stevie Wonder and Curtis Mayfield were the records on rotation. After a publishing deal that asked him to write pop for other people, he walked away, taught Thai kickboxing to keep the lights on, started his own label Afro Gigolo, and sent acoustic demos around. People Records put “Runaway Train” on a sampler. In 2001 the self-titled debut arrived on Compost. Q Magazine said his “caressing tones could sell sunshine to an Australian.” The follow-up, Hoxton Popstars, took off in Japan; “Fire” went to number one and stayed there for two weeks. Hear the Sound brought a duet with Grammy-nominated Brazilian vocalist Bebel Gilberto.
The sound has always been a fusion of soul, jazz, acoustic pop, and world music, written and produced by Davies himself. He has toured Europe, North America, and Asia, including eight Japan tours and sixteen headline shows at Blue Note venues. Collaborators over the years include Quincy Jones, Richard Bona, Roy Hargrove, Louie Vega, Bebel Gilberto, and others. As a producer he worked on Sony albums for Mika Urbaniak that picked up Best Pop Album recognition. Painting sits beside all of that — heavy acrylics with a sculptural, rhythmic quality — because he does not treat the disciplines as separate rooms. “Music is music. I don’t see any boundaries when it comes to genres,” he has said. Same rule for canvas and film.
That attitude still fits the moment. Neo-soul keeps pulling listeners who want melody and feel over algorithm bait, and Latin-inflected pop keeps widening the summer playlist. Davies was doing a version of that mix twenty-five years ago. ‘Be The One’ just proves he never really left the room.
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What do you think of this one — original or the deep house remixes first? Drop it in the comments.
