Studio Electrophonique ‘Studio Electrophonique' LP

James Leesley grew up in Handsworth, Sheffield where week-day evenings were spent kicking a football around  grassy urban edgelands. At the weekends, the social clubs with their glitter balls, comedians, cockle sellers and  sequin-suited cabaret singers brought a touch of glamour to this hilltop suburb on the fringe of an industrial  northern city. The stage was not some far-off place. Dreams could be made and broken under bright lights and by the brusk tones of a bingo caller. 

The classic songs, slap back echo and house organ sounds of the social club scene are in Leesley’s blood. His work draws inspiration from the heartfelt melodies of songsmiths like Carole King and Burt Bacharach with the smokey tenderness of vocalists such as Dusty Springfield and Elvis. Add to that his enthusiasm for American literature and the surrealism of 60s French cinema. 

After stumbling across an old 4-track tape machine at a local Bring and Buy, Leesley used it to distill these influences into something that is spare in its sound but full in its intention and emotion. In 2019 he released Buxton Palace Hotel on Violette Records, an EP of six odes to the mystery of modern romance,  followed in 2022 by the Happier Things EP. Leesley found a fan in Richard Hawley who he joined on a tour of the UK and Ireland and, under the Studio Electrophonique name, he played at the prestigious End of the Road and Green Man Festivals.

He was also invited by French superstar Etienne Daho to support him at the legendary Olympia in Paris. Leesley received airplay on BBC Radio 6 Music (Steve Lamacq, Gideon Coe, Mark Radcliffe, Stuart Maconie & Tom Robinson), BBC Radio 3 (Unclassified) and Soho Radio (Pete Paphides).

After a chance meeting with Simon Tong, the pair bonded over a love of The Velvet Underground, The Byrds, Barry Hines’ books, Jake Thackray, Blackpool's North Pier, and late night attic-darts. At Tong’s home studio in South London they added an assortment of vintage guitars and Casio keyboards (Pipe Organ mode) to fragments of lyrics Leesley had scribbled on the back of betting slips and bus tickets.  

The result is an 11-track album that finds big feelings in small details. Loneliness, beauty, longing and loss all linger in the everyday occurrences: the moments of miscommunication over tea and eggs, the neatly folded pyjamas left by a long-gone lover, the raindrops on the top deck window of a No. 52 bus, the rain-sodden faded glamour of a cheap seaside getaway. Captured on a Tascam reel to reel,  Leesley’s mesmerising debut promises to whisk any listener away to a warm, intimate and day-dreamy place.

"If you’ve yet to hear Studio Electrophonique, may I suggest you set aside an opportunity to do so. Right now, no-one does sparse lovelorn intimacy quite as well as James Leesley. Everyone I play his songs seems to fall a little bit in love with him." - Pete Paphides

"It’s got a really magical, close-up ambience. It does sound like it fell directly out of his imagination and onto tape" - BBC Radio 3