NEXT Magazine Interview “Looking out…and up."

by Gregory T. Angelo

Meet Darren. He’s not from around here. The eclectic preppie was born in Lincoln, a small city just outside of London, and only came to the States following his university education in the British capital. New York is his home now, and has been for the last five years.

“I was hooked,” Darren says of his initial exposure to Gotham and its artistic community. “I just fell in love with the city—the atmosphere, the people.”

The people especially. Much of the inspiration for Anything Is Possible, Darren’s debut album, came not from the environs surrounding him in this grand industrial expanse, but from the people populating it. “I live in the West Village,” the baby-faced bandolier shares, “and there are so many amazing coffee bars and places you can go to have a cup of tea to watch people in New York. A couple of the songs [on the album] were about watching other people and seeing what was going on in the lives around me and interpreting that into a song.”

If your inspiration is the emotional complexities of day-to-day Manhattan living, it naturally follows that Anything Is Possible’s tracklist isn’t exactly a peaches-and-cream stroll through Central Park West. Songs such as “Drowning” and “Patch Me Up” translate the isolation and high-stakes desperation that comes with the struggle to survive in the city. “There are people I knew who were having dreams and expecting more out of life [but] things really weren’t happening,” Darren elaborates, “but if you take a look around, everything you really need is right there—you’re in New York living a life a lot of people just dream about.”

That couldn’t be more true for Darren, who is not only the lead musician on Anything Is Possible, but also the producer, vocalist and head of marketing on the project, having released his debut disc on Shark Meat Records, the label he launched with co-owner Armando Ortiz earlier this year. “It was an intense experience setting up the record label, writing, producing and doing everything right down to the backing vocals on the album— I don’t think I’d ever want to do all of that again!” Darren sighs with a relieved giggle. “But it’s not enough these days just to write some great songs and put a CD out; you’ve got to know how the business works.”

If the swath of quirky electro-orchestral arrangements on Anything Is Possible still leave any doubt lingering in your ears, know that the entrepreneurial upstart is currently overseeing his own career in tandem with that of Grace Garland, who recently signed with Shark Meat, as well as a artist whose debut Darren will produce.

“There’s always a bit of silver around the cloud,” Darren concludes, speaking of his songs as much as his outlook. In addition to his talent, it’s one of the rea-sons the musician has persevered where lesser artists would not, and why he’s still looking out at the world from the vantage point of New York.

Anything Is Possible (Shark Meat Records) is available now. Visit darrenmusic.com for more info.