Damian Wilde

Damian was raised by a supportive but constantly working single mother in Belhar just outside Cape Town in a home filled with schizophrenics and manic-depressives whom his mother cared for. ‘My mother was a nurse at Valkenberg Psychiatric Hospital and she used to care for those who were on their way back to the ‘real world’ and had trouble adjusting. They became my carers and my friends’ says Damian.

After two years of writing and performing as part of the pSy-hOp band ‘The Red Underground’, he decided to work on a solo project, he uses music to make sense of his feelings and reflect on what he describes as the “fucked up” state of being human.

‘My heart, it feels tainted and black. There are a lot of things that are wrong inside’, he says. ‘When I make a record I try and scrape off pieces of it, smear it on a record and send it out there,” he says. His records are keys that fit the locks holding his feelings, and he hopes those keys unlock the same emotions within his listeners. Or even if they just serve as a type of “comfort food” where, knowing that someone else is going through a similar situation is a comfort in itself.’

He started writing poetry at 10, music became his outlet at 16 and by 19 he was in a band. Now at 21 he continues to develop his ability to articulate his emotions and reflect on his challenges through music.

And this ‘’self-reliant’ attitude is what Damian is all about. After all he is the guy who started producing because he needed a producer and didn’t know one whose work he liked enough. Who learned to play guitar from videos after his band lost their guitarist, and who finds the piano – which he just started playing naturally and still doesn’t know or want to know any of the names of any of the keys or chords his “honest instrument”, a tool to aid him on his journey of self discovery a journey of “a twisted mind in an even more chaotic world”.

This is Damian Wilde, this is Nouveau Noir.

Find out more about Damian here at these links:

1. Official Website
2. Facebook
3. Twitter
4. Bandcamp

You can also watch a decent video of “The Umbrella Co.” right here: