M. Craft

Martin Craft performs and records under the name M. Craft as a singer, songwriter/composer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer whose early life alternated between Australia and the U.K. At age twelve he returned to his birthplace of Canberra, Australia, and two years afterward he founded the indie rock band Sidewinder, taking the bass chair alongside his brother Nick Craft on lead vocals and guitar plus Pip Branson on guitar and Giri Fox on drums. The quartet issued three EPs and two albums—Atlantis in 1995 and Tangerine in 1997—through Half a Cow Records before dissolving in 2000. During the same period Craft undertook formal piano and composition studies at the Canberra School of Music, later renamed the Australian National University School of Music. He then moved to London, England, to launch a solo career, issuing the EP I Can See It All Tonight in 2004 under the M. Craft moniker. The 2006 full-length Silver & Fire, carrying echoes of Elliott Smith and Tropicália, came next, followed by the 2008 LP Arrows at the Sun; around the same years he joined Jarvis Cocker’s touring band as a regular member.

In 2013 Craft settled in California and began work on a third solo album in Los Angeles before withdrawing to a desert cabin in Joshua Tree. The resulting record, Blood Moon, appeared on Heavenly in 2016; its atmospheric orchestral pieces originated as extended piano compositions, and the title references two lunar events he observed during his stay. A fully instrumental reworking, Blood Moon Deconstructed, surfaced in 2017 and featured harpist Mary Lattimore together with percussionist Danny Frankel.