What's On
Aeris Roves
27th September 2018 - 19:00
Price: £7.00Prices available at box office, email or via telephone.
Venue: Studio
Company: SJM
There’s a secluded place in Greenwich, quiet and with a view over the city. To get there, you need to head through a tunnel and under the river. On the other side sits The Royal Observatory, The National Maritime Museum – famous monuments, pieces of British history – and it’s here that Aeris Roves started to piece together the feelings that became his debut collection of songs, heading to this spot alone late at night and into the early hours of the morning.
“It was like a time freeze, it gave me space,” he says, speaking on the historical buildings he was surrounded by, and how there was no one else around. “People are always trying to move forward, progress, modernise, but here I’m away from that and it gives me time to be by myself.”
The songs born from this place will be presented within a film called Tunnel Vision, so titled because of the literal walkway Aeris had to pass through to reach his place, but also because the songs all fit into similar themes – of lust, love, confusion and curiosity, all told over silky R&B. Before getting deeper into all of the above, though, some background.
Initially growing up in Worksop, a town in south Yorkshire, Aeris moved to London aged ten. “There’s always been family problems, like addiction, and as a young person you either react well or react in the worst way, and I don't think I responded particularly well to it. So the decision was made that Yorkshire wasn’t the best place to be, and I went with it,” he explains, telling how he ended up moving in with his dad in Charlton.
The plan was to stay in London for six months and then move back. But Aeris quickly settled into the city, becoming intrigued with the culture and opportunities it offered that were unavailable further up north. He’d already been singing in a choir in Yorkshire. In London, however, he ended up performing at the O2 arena as part of a school production. There was never any intention of becoming a songwriter but, as a hobby, he picked up his dad’s old guitar and taught himself how to play.
Around the same time Aeris became interested in prose and the way words could be used to create vivid scenes, parlaying emotions in a unique way. And so he combined the two skills, naturally progressing to writing songs, many of which were written and recorded in his school’s music studio. “I didn’t take music GCSE. Music was my hobby, not my job,” he says. By sixth form however he’d dropped out and reapplied for a new course – one solely based on music – purely because he’d been missing so many lessons due to spending time writing and recording.
“I feel really strongly with being free with what you enjoy and gravitate toward, and I seem to gravitate toward the studio. I’m not one for fighting that. If that’s where your head and heart is telling you to go, do it,” he explains. “I’ve always been under the impression that if it’s something you want to do, then put everything into it. And I knew in my heart that music is what I wanted to do.”
Though his real name is Kyle Miller, Aeris Rose is the headspace he enters when writing music. While here, he says his sole intention is to connect with people – to communicate emotion. “It seems like you’re out on your own, but no matter how alone you feel there’s always an interaction with someone else, and that’s something I try to explore with my music.”
Although Aeris grew up on The Drifters, Roy Orbison and northern soul, his songs fuse soul and R&B with smooth vocals and the odd smattering of rap. Debut track “Best Dressed Man”, which features production from Two Inch Punch, was released earlier this year and swiftly followed up by “Feel Me”. The emotionally resonant lyrics and smokey, lust-filled production set a scene: on “Best Dressed Man”, of it being “2am, [with the] lights out in everybody’s bedroom, moon by the window”; and on “Feel Me”, of someone asking for love, going crazy because they’re filled with desire.
“A lot of these songs come from a similar headspace. When I was writing them, there was a series of feelings I was stumbling across a lot and channeled them into music,” he says. “The songs are about lust, but as to who and what it’s about it’s open to interpretation. That word has a lot of negative connotations – recklessness, lack of control – but these songs are about the positive connotations… it’s me trying to build a connection as a pair with someone.”
And so, back to the secluded place in Greenwich. Songs like “Runningthru3am” focus specifically on that area, on how Aeris would have a birds eye view and look down on flashing lights. Others, like “Sobering Up”, express their sentiments in the title. However while these songs are based on Aeris’ own experience, his greatest talent lays in his ability to express the feelings of others – and it’s this knack for expression that’s going to set him apart from the rest of the UK scene. Ultimately, for Aeris, writing music is about connecting with people on a deeper level.
“It’s about establishing that connection where I write for myself but can also put myself in the shoes of someone else, have empathy, and write for them as well – emotionally, not physically.”
