Nick Laird-Clowes

Nick Laird-Clowes (born 5 February 1957, London, England) is a musician and composer, most famous as the lead singer and one of the principal songwriters for the band The Dream Academy. His most famous songs include "Life in a Northern Town", "The Love Parade", "The Edge of Forever", "This World", "Indian Summer", "Power to Believe" and "12/8 Angel".

Biography

Laird-Clowes was a member of Alfalpha and the Act before The Dream Academy. He was also a presenter for the first series of the Channel 4 music show, The Tube.

The Dream Academy were formed in the 1980s and released three albums.^[1]

His solo album, Mona Lisa Overdrive, was released under the name Trashmonk in 1999 under Alan McGee's Creation Records, and re-released a few years later with two extra tracks ("Mr Karma" and "Fur Hat") under the reinvented PopTones label, again by McGee.

A friend of David Gilmour, with whom he co-produced both The Dream Academy and A Different Kind of Weather albums, he also contributed lyrics to two songs on Pink Floyd's album The Division Bell. As Trashmonk, he opened for some of Gilmour's performances in the early 2000s. Gilmour also played on The Dream Academy's "Living in a War", first released retrospectively on the 2014 compilation The Morning Lasted All Day - A Retrospective in 2014.^[1]

In recent years, he has been heavily involved in film soundtracks and documentaries, producing the score for The Invisible Circus, directed by Adam Brooks and starring Cameron Diaz. He was the musical consultant for Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers, and was responsible for composing the music for Fierce People, a 2005 film directed by Griffin Dunne, starring Diane Lane and Donald Sutherland and for Wit Licht, directed by Jean van de Velde. Nick Broomfield's film Battle for Haditha, premiered at the London Film Festival in 2007, also had a Laird-Clowes soundtrack.^[2] In June 2009, he scored Broomfield's agitprop documentary for Greenpeace, A Time Comes, featuring the single "Mayday". He worked as composer and music consultant for the 2013 film by Richard Curtis, About Time.^[2]

In May 2007, Laird-Clowes organised, together with Joe Boyd, the Syd Barrett memorial concert "The Madcap's Last Laugh" at the Barbican Centre in London, in which he also performed.

References