Fink

Fin Greenall, who is the voice and heart behind Fink, often gets mistaken for other people.

At the BMI Awards in the US, a ‘roomful of gangstas and playas’ were convinced the Cornwall-born, Bristol-raised Englishman was a lawyer, and not a songwriter picking up an ‘American Urban’ gong – one of three BMIs he received for his work with John Legend on the soul singer’s Evolver album.


In Berlin, clubbing capital of the world, they think he helps run a small minimal techno label. In certain London circles he’s known as the hardworking insider whose past roles at DefJam, Sony Music, Talkin’ Loud, and Source saw him work with a range of artists longer than the horizon. At the BBC, they imagine Fink as perhaps the only musician who has played both the Electric Proms and the actual Proms (was that really the same guy leading a 120-piece orchestra at the Royal
Albert Hall in an ‘immense’ cover of Roy Ayers’ Everybody Loves The Sunshine?).

In record company circles, he’s the producer who worked on the first demos by Amy Winehouse and the writer who’s been crafting hooks for Professor Green. In big-room booths around the world, he’s the internationally-renowned DJ and Ninja Tune stalwart who finally hung up his Sennheisers with a valedictory set at London’s Fabric.

Who is Fin Greenall? All of the above. Yes, the now-Brighton-based musician acknowledges, he has done – does do – all of those things. ‘But the Fink thing is my main thing.’

Perfect Darkness is the new album by Fink. Recorded in Los Angeles in 20 super-creative days, it brims with one-take wonders and naturalistic, hand-on-heart, head-in-hands, head-in-the-clouds songs. It’s a ‘singer-songwriter’ album that manages to encompass DJ Shadow and Nick Drake; that is marinaded in blues, jazz and soul; that’s sung by Greenall in a voice that has a relaxed, textured, woody heft.

Growing up, he hoovered up the sounds he heard on John Peel: ‘The Cure, The Smiths, The Orb, African music, Japanese hardcore’. He embraced skateboarding, the music and the fashion – ‘it was an awesome way to grow your own culture’. At university in Leeds, electronic and dance music became everything. We were really inspired by Aphex Twin and The Orb and Moby.

His ardour and his skills saw Greenall become part of the Ninja Tune family – first signed on the back of a cassette-tape demo - as artist, DJ, writer, producer, and remixer.

Greenall knows of what he speaks. His world of experiences – high and low, electronic and acoustic, musical and cultural and chemical, behind the decks and on the dancefloor and at the mic – have fed into his new album. Perfect Darkness is an album of perfect lightness, and perfect balance too.

“One of the most original singer-songwriters around” Clash
“Say hello to your new soundtrack” NME
“If you’re into John Martyn, Massive Attack and Adem, you’ll dig it” Time Out (NY)
“His album often achieves such loveliness you don’t want it to end. An organic
warmth prevails on even the most emotionally chaotic songs” The Guardian
“A classic” BBC
“This nuanced, gratifying album will seep into your consciousness” Metro

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Fink