David Thomas Broughton

David Thomas Broughton, a British singer and songwriter, regards his output as folk music refracted through contemporary methods. He relies on current sampling techniques, most often harvesting his own guitar lines, percussion, and vocals as source material, while weaving in processed field recordings, loops, and discovered objects as instruments. Recording sessions follow an immediate, unrehearsed logic in which tracks are usually captured in one pass irrespective of results. His first album, The Complete Guide to Insufficiency, surfaced in 2005 on Birdwar through Plug Research and illustrated this workflow, drawing broadly favorable notices from the English press. Cut inside a Leeds church, the five extended pieces foregrounded every production habit noted above. The Anchovies EP followed in 2006 with far simpler means, and 2007 brought both the album It’s in There Somewhere and his earliest full-length partnership, David Thomas Broughton vs. 7 Hertz.

After steady touring across the U.K. and Europe, he issued the Boating Disasters EP on Static Caravan in 2010. Performances continued that year even as he began tracking Outbreeding, which he finished in early 2011 and saw released that June by Golden Lab. Time spent in North Korea working for the UN preceded a move to Seoul, South Korea, where he joined an organization focused on preserving habitats of migratory water birds. His second collaboration, Sliding the Same Way with the Juice Vocal Ensemble, appeared in early fall 2014 on Edinburgh’s Song by Toad label and stands as the most plainly folk-styled entry in his discography.

From 2012 onward, amid continued travel and other releases, Broughton assembled the sprawling Crippling Lack with contributions from Beth Orton and Sam Amidon, tracking parts and vocals in France, the U.K., and the United States. The project’s guiding principle centered on the number three, resulting in a 12-song, 140-minute triple LP issued by three separate labels on three successive dates: Crippling Lack, Vol. 1 via Song by Toad in April 2016, Vol. 2 through France’s LeNoizeMaker in May, and Vol. 3 by Brooklyn’s Paper Garden Records in June.