Neil Halstead

Neil Halstead (born 7 October 1970) is an English musician born in Reading, Berkshire, England. He's been hailed by AllMusic]as “one of Britain’s most respected songwriters,” and Timeout magazine as “one of Britain's greatest songwriters”. Neil Halstead has earned an ardent following by making intensely atmospheric music with a near-hypnotic power. The singer/guitarist served as frontman and primary songwriter for Slowdive (the legendary shoegaze outfit whose seminal studio albums include 1993’s Souvlaki, (co-produced by Brian Eno). After its 1995 breakup, Slowdive morphed into the Halstead-helmed Mojave 3 and released a string of highly celebrated records that merged jangly alt-country with dusky psychedelic dream-pop. In 2006 Mojave 3 went on indefinite hiatus, prompting Halstead to embark on an acoustic-driven solo career marked by an emphasis on British-folk-inspired melody and a love of surfing . An occasional drift into more whimsical territory prompted NME to rave ‘like Syd Barrett if he’d ever set foot on a surf board’. Halstead's first solo album Sleeping on Roads was followed by 2008’s Oh! Mighty Engine, released on friend and fellow surfer Jack Johnson‘s Brushfire label. Halstead's latest album Palindrome Hunches was released in 2012 and was labelled as “An exquisite set of dark folk music” from The Times as well as being well acclaimed by God is in the TV , "Undoubtedly one of the finest British records released this year”