An interview based around the album:
‘GOING DOWN SLOW’
by DAVID J BOSWELL
(2025, Atlantis Audio
https://www.facebook.com/david.boswell.351/about )
‘Forks and spoons and abstract tunes,’ Bozzy is a self-described ‘big scruffy old man with a big scruffy old beard.’ But there’s a great deal more to David John Boswell than that.
The ‘Intro’ to his album Going Down Slow forms a Close Encounters Of The Third Kind access code.
Then, on the next track in, he protests that she wants a ‘Casual Encounter’, but he just turns around and runs. Myself, although I can appreciate David’s apparent wariness, I’d quite enjoy a ‘Casual Encounter’ round about now. ‘Ha!, well it was a crazy story’ he says, without actually telling the crazy story itself. ‘I’m hoping you like the record. I’ve been doing a press day today, sending out the press kits. It doesn’t matter where they land. I’m just grateful for some interest. There’s no way we can afford a legit PR company, I’ve used so many in the past and sometimes it can be a waste of money. But I seem to be doing OK with this press run.’ He pauses for reflection. ‘You never know if the album’s any good or not, but I think I’ve captured a new vibe, I think, I hope…’
Well, maybe. There’s a kind of Acid-Folk, Electro-Folk or Wyrd-Folk at work here in the blue vinyl grooves. Nice Bob Dylan guitar picking amplified by keening notes. There’s ‘Tall Skinny Girlfriend’ – David likes ‘em like that, in a lineage from ‘Long Tall Sally’ and ‘Bony Moronie’ who was ‘as skinny as a stick of macaroni’. Except that the track operates around a programmed drum-thump. The lyric says she won’t do cocaine, but she does do twittering electronica and gnawing synth phrases alongside the acoustic guitar.
David’s a Record Producer with Matt Walsh’s Clouded Vision label, he’s also an international DJ, and multi-instrumentalist with Hiem, the electronic dance duo from Sheffield. Hiem consists of left helmsman ‘Bozzwell’ himself, with Nick ‘Nicco’ Eastwood – they met backstage at the 1999 Reading Festival, get expanded for live dates with Andrew Stenton (drums) and guitar. Hiem released a 2013 single collaboration with Phil Oakey, ‘2am’ issued as Nang Records (NANG072LCD) – ‘getting hold of Phil is like trying to get hold of Father Christmas’ he laughs, and third duo album Hotspace (2017, NANG153) where – the press says, ‘percussive bass guitar and shimmering guitar wrap around the Sci-Fi themed tour-de-force.’
‘If I say something strange, my apologies’ he pre-emptively explains. ‘I’m diagnosed as a high functioning autistic, so I’m a bit of an oddball.’ So we can be oddballs together. Most of my friends are oddballs of various kinds. Sometimes, I think we share that kind of creative autism, where we have the ability to become totally absorbed in what we’re doing to the exclusion of every distraction. It can be a positive thing. ‘Yeh, you’re right. I spent all my life wondering why I was walking around thinking about song-structures, chords, synthesizers, drumkits and guitars and why everyone else didn’t, and then – when I started being assessed, which took two years, the doctor said ‘you are a high functioning autistic,’ and everything clicked, things made more sense!’
The album track ‘Big Star’ uses a familiar ‘Goin’ Up The Country’ Blues structure, to renewed effect, with David’s voice vocoded into a harmonica soundalike. Then fingers squeak on the fret for ‘On The Right Track’ with something about his lived-in voice that reminds me vaguely of Gerry Rafferty. Or maybe John Martyn, because David likes John Martyn too. According to the lyric, he likes the simple things. He doesn’t like it so loud. He prefers to just take a couple of chords and some words to know how. He’s riding a different train on a new track. He’s never looking back. It’s a stand-out track on an album that launches a legal challenge to the very law of gravity.
‘I was born in Prestatyn (the resort along the north Wales coast from Rhyl), and started playing drums when I was ten. I used to play in Heavy Metal bands, my first band was Monza.’ Monza are featured on the 2024 Rough Diamonds compilation album that David curated, with four heavy tracks, including ‘Look To The Stars’ and ‘Make Or Break’. ‘My first guitar, the first one I owned was a Satellite guitar, I remember looking at it through the window in the Sound Centre in Rhyl – an old small shop when I was ten. I think my Dad bought it for me for £30/£40 at the time, it’s still the weirdest looking thing, but quite cute at the same time.’ David was also in a band called Silverstone, ‘We were really explosive and exciting though, I’d love to get hold of the single again!’
‘Anyhows’ he narrates, ‘after that I had a crazy manager who moved me into a house in Liverpool, that all went sideways. Then I moved to Barnsley to do a Music Tech degree, but absolutely hated that. I broke up with a girl there, so I started coming to Sheffield to work with everyone here, and ended up doing the All Seeing I album, doing Top of the Pops and all that Pop Star thing.’ All Seeing I – with Dean Honer, Jason Buckle and DJ Parrot, was something of a Sheffield collective project, their only album, Pickled Eggs & Sherbet (1999, Earth Records 8573-80036-2) features Tony Christie (‘Walk Like A Panther’), Philip Oakey (‘First Man In Space’) as well as Jarvis Cocker and Stephen Jones of Babybird. ‘Boz’ wrote and sang on ‘Sweet Music’, and fronted the band for live dates.
‘Anyhows, I wasn’t very good at being a Pop star type, it scared me to death! So that ended and I started making music as Hiem with my co-pilot Nick Eastwood, we made a load of records – getting NME Single of the Week, and DJing everywhere. Then I did a German album with Firm Records of Köln, and had loads of big European club hits. I was DJing a lot in Europe, flying about etc… Oh, I’ve also done remixes for Visage, Visage covered one of my songs ‘Clubscene Popscene’ (on the 2015 album Demons To Diamonds, August Day ADAY23), I also did a track with Roots Manuva (on 2013 twelve-inch EP ‘DJ Culture’, NANG16). Anyhows, then I started doing my solo David J Boswell stuff about seven years ago, and voila! I’m here… So, I have three alias’s – Bozzwell (Techno Dance Stuff), Hiem (Electro Italo Pop stuff), and David J Boswell the folky electronic leftfield stuff.’
The album track ‘Better Days’ is a good example of leftfield folky electronica, as ambient sound leads into a circular guitar hook and an instrumental weave of unlikely elements that come together in immaculate synthesis. David plays all the instruments, with the electric and acoustic guitar interplay that underpins the highly personal confessional lyric of ‘Heavy Load’. With Sci-Fi overtones that run around the George Harrison guitar of ‘I Know What I Saw’, amplified by the heavied-up Disco remix included as a bonus track. If anyone can provide the link from Nick Drake to Kraftwerk, it’s David J Boswell.
In ‘No Colours’ he aches for a monochrome world of black and white, yet the track fills your head with rainbows. The moody title-track, running to over seven minutes, and set to a programmed drum-track with the curling insinuating snarl of synth-lines, has the sounds of the white horse on the surreal cover-art as it trots and whinnies, ‘children crying, the TV’s lying’, enhanced by hypnotic repetitions. It exists in its own space between genres.
David sometimes gets online spam from ‘crazy bots just trying to get you to subscribe to their OnlyFans page.’ And ‘yeh, I think I deserve a bit of good luck, I’ve had a terrible year’ he adds. ‘I was in hospital for a bit early this year, which was a nightmare, ended up being diagnosed with severe sleep apnoea (which is a condition in which breathing stops and starts during periods of sleep). Then my twin brother (Elijah) passed away from an infection he caught in hospital over a simple operation. You never get over it, you kinda live through it as opposed to living with it, if that makes sense. But talking about it all is no bother at all, it’s what being an artist is about, wearing you heart on your sleeve for everyone to see. So yes, it’s been a struggle.’
‘I’m hoping you like the record’ he closes, ‘I think I’ve captured a new vibe with this album, I think, I hope…’
BY ANDREW DARLINGTON
‘GOING DOWN SLOW’ (2025, Atlantis Audio)
(1) ‘Intro’ 1:11, co-written and produced with Ed Nauen
(2) ‘Casual Encounter’ 2:59, co-written with Paul Davies
(3) ‘Tall Skinny Girlfriend’ 3:52
(4) ‘Big Star’ 2:44
(5) ‘On The Right Track’ 4:35
(6) ‘Better Days’ 4:47, co-written with Kimi Sears
(7) ‘Heavy Load’ 3:31
(8) ‘I Know What I Saw’ 3:16
(9) ‘Going Down Slow Part 2’ 7:23
(10) ‘Savant-Like Qualities’ 2:37, instrumental
(11) ‘No Colours’ 3:30
Bonus track
‘I Know What I Saw: Disco Edit’ 2:06, clear vinyl seven-inch single bundled with the album, a Bozz remix and a Tom The Cosmic Cowboy mix
Cover-art by Chris Buncall
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