Gareth Donkin

Written and recorded in a series of bedroom studios across England and France, London-based Gareth Donkin's extraordinary debut, Welcome Home, showcases the 23-year-old's stunning mix of instrumental virtuosity and emotional intuition, blending sophisticated melodic and harmonic craftsmanship with lyrical explorations of longing, desire, and determination.

The tracks draw on soul, funk, pop, yacht rock, hip-hop, jazz, and even bossa nova, hinting at times to everything from Michael Jackson and Bill Evans to George Benson and Jamiroquai. Gareth's production style is mesmerizing, layering up instrument after instrument in the best one-man-band tradition of Prince or Stevie Wonder. The result is a moving work that's equal parts brain and brawn, a masterful coming-of-age self-portrait from a young artist discovering himself — and his sound — one song at a time.

Born with perfect pitch, Donkin was already fanatically obsessed with both jazz piano and drums before he turned twelve. In high school, he began DJing and teaching himself to record and sample, and by the time he headed to the Leeds College of Music to pursue a degree in production, he was already writing and recording his own material at home. His first single, "Catharsis," was released in 2019 and would go on to rack up more than a million streams on Spotify. A series of subsequent tracks would find similarly organic success and help land him his first record deal.