Indie songsmith Lightspeed Champion has begun working on new material with a former ‘X Factor’ contestant.
Dev Hynes has had one of the most remarkable turnarounds in modern British music. The songwriter began life in the frantic nu rave merchants Test Icicles, blasting out some synth fuelled punk jams.
However after only one album the group split, admitting that even they couldn’t stand their music anymore. Since then, Dev Hynes has re-emerged as Lightspeed Champion, a songwriter driven by a love of plaintive Americana.
Retreating to the Saddle Creek collective in the United States, Lightspeed Champion’s debut album ‘Falling Off The Lavender Bridge’ was an intoxicating delight. Here’s a quick comparison:
Test Icicles – ‘Circle Square Triangle’
Lightspeed Champion – ‘Midnight Surprise’
The (rather laboured) point of all this? People change, musicians evolve and you can’t hold a person’s past crimes against them.
Lightspeed Champion has revealed in a new interview that he is working on new material with a former X Factor contestant. NME reports that Hynes met the singer Diana Vickers are meeting her at a poetry reading.
Chatting afterwards, the pair staying in touch and have written two new songs – ‘Wood Wolf’ and ‘Anything Will Do’.
Dev Hynes now lives in New York, where he is working on his forthcoming second album. However once the songwriter returns to London he is set to continue work with Vickers. The one time X Factor contestant isn’t the only collaborator Hynes has, as the singwriter is working with Nerina Pallot.
Lightspeed Champion is due to release his new album early next year.
