Carmel Smickersgill - Unsolicited Advice (PRAH)

A 5-track EP from emerging modern-classical-outsider-pop artist Carmel Smickersgill.

“Silly music that comes from serious places” is how Smickersgill modestly describes the crackling flashpoints and thrillingly assembled palette of sounds that made up her  previous PRAH Recordings debut We Get What We Get & We Don’t Get Upset back in 2022.

Since then, Smickersgill’s career has taken her down a rich array of different paths. She has performed as a support act for her mentor Anna Meredith on multiple occasions and appeared on Elizabeth Alker’s BBC Radio 3 programme Northern Drift.

She describes her forthcoming EP Unsolicited Advice as “...a letter to a past self through the filter of hindsight.” Each track was written from a place of learning, a shift in perspective or a hard truth she feels her former self wasn’t ready to hear.

Subtly darker in tone to its predecessor, Smickersgill is keen to stress that “Unsolicited Advice still has a good amount of taking silly noises very seriously.” The EP’s genesis and development was hugely collaborative, with the composer working closely with Pip De La Sayers (saxophone), Marco Woolf (production) and Atanas Dochev (percussion).

The composer lists the likes of Arthur Russell and Mica Levi among her influences, but those who listen and recall Anna Meredith’s work aren’t far from the mark either: the Scottish composer and performer has been acting as a mentor for Smickersgill during the creative process, listening to demos and offering feedback.