As if winning the 2020 Mercury Prize wasn’t fashionable enough, Michael Kiwanuka has now had his track Solid Ground receive a haute couture remix from designer Virgil Abloh.
Abloh, the artistic director for menswear at Louis Vuitton and founder of Milan fashion house Off-White, had previously used the song to promote collections at Paris Fashion Week. Abloh’s remix of Solid Ground – a soft and soulful number which featured on Kiwanuka’s eponymous third album – clocks in at just over the six minute mark, and fuses in brassy jazz and drum ‘n’ bass elements. Kiwanuka’s rich, velvety vocal (which falls somewhere between Jimi Hendrix and Gregory Porter) thankfully remains intact.
Solid Ground featured on the set-list for Kiwanuka’s recent gig at the iconic Victoria and Albert Museum. The North London singer-songwriter’s intimate, string quartet-backed showcase was captured in a series of videos by Raja Virdi, who has also directed promos for Freya Ridings, Passenger, and New South Wales folk songwriter Matt Cordy. Virdi told Promo News that he was delighted to get behind the camera again for a performance that NME have since described as ‘breathtaking‘: “I’ve worked with Michael before on an album teaser so it was lovely to be asked back to direct this live session. As soon as I heard we had The V&A it made it all that more exciting. Location is so important for my live performances, so to have the chance to shoot in the paintings gallery was insane.”
Kiwanuka seems to be staying grounded rather than basking in the afterglow of his Mercury Prize triumph for Kiwanuka, a record which has been glowingly described as “an early-career opus” by Rolling Stone, and a “bold, expansive, heartfelt, sublime album” by the Guardian. In a recent NME interview he suggested that he was looking to invest a portion of his prize winnings in community music facilities, saying “I think people forget how exciting and powerful playing music is, especially young people. With the news about kids not enjoying school, if they can find music and a place to do that and play loudly or just learn instruments, I think there’s so much they can gain from that. Music saved my life so I’d love to have a space where people could be able to do that. So hopefully some of this money can go towards starting something like that.”
2021 looks set to be another busy year for the Muswell Hill product, with a series of re-scheduled tour dates around Europe and the UK culminating in a homecoming show at Alexandra Palace on September 17th.
2021 UK Tour dates:
26/03/2021 – O2 Academy – Glasgow
27/03 – Bonus Arena – Hull
29/03 – O2 Apollo – Manchester
30/03 – Empress Ballroom – Blackpool
01/04 – De Montford Hall – Leicester
02/04 – Pavilions – Plymouth
03/04 – Brighton Centre – Brighton
05/04 – O2 Academy – Leeds
06/04 – O2 Academy Brixton – London
09/08 – Summer Sessions – Edinburgh
15/09 – O2 Academy – Newcastle
16/09 – Corn Exchange – Cambridge
17/09 – Alexandra Palace – London
