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Tokio Myers VibeZ

Fourteen tracks from a classically trained London pianist who won a television talent show and used the platform to make something considerably stranger than expected.

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Tokio Myers

Tokio Myers won Britain's Got Talent in 2017, which is usually the end of an artistic story rather than the beginning of one. In his case the background was already unusual: he had trained at the Royal College of Music as a scholar, and had worked for years as a touring keyboard player for other artists.

What he does is a genuine hybrid rather than a crossover gimmick. He plays classical repertoire and contemporary pop through the same instrument and the same sensibility, often layering a piano performance over programmed beats and electronic textures, and he treats Debussy and Ed Sheeran as equally available material.

The gap between where that could have gone — light classical covers albums — and where it went is the interesting part.

What to listen for

"Bloodstream" is the track that won the competition and still the best introduction — an Ed Sheeran song fused with Debussy's Clair de Lune, played on a piano he had modified himself.

"Children" and its interlude are the most emotionally direct things here, and the piece has a history he has spoken about publicly — he witnessed the killing of his headmaster as a schoolboy in London, and the music is connected to that.

"Baltimore" is the most political, and "Our Generation" is the most ambitious arrangement.

"Lotus Flower" is the Radiohead reading and the most successful of the interpretations — a song built on rhythm rather than melody, rendered as a piano piece.

"Angel", "Red" and "Polaroid" are the original compositions and the ones that suggest where he might go next.

"Mercy" and "Pursuit of Happiness" are the covers most likely to surprise, and the Clean Bandit remix is the most straightforwardly commercial thing on the list.

Go deeper

Our Generation (2017) is the album, and it is considerably more coherent than a talent-show debut has any right to be.

For the wider field of pianists working between classical and electronic music: Ólafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm, Max Richter and Hania Rani. Arnalds in particular is doing the same thing with more time behind him.

Why it is not a novelty: the obvious route after a talent show win is a covers album of light classics, and this is not that. The original compositions are the strongest material, the classical references are used structurally rather than quoted, and the piano itself was modified to get the sound. That is a musician's record, whatever the platform it came from.

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