There’s an underwater quality to Doya Beardmore’s music, an otherworldliness that bubbles up and dissipates. Guitars wash over twinkling melodies while lyrics fade into dubby drum beats. It’s a tantalising sound, which the Doncaster-based 28-year-old known as Skinny Pelembe has made his own since he was discovered last year by Gilles Peterson’s Future Bubblers programme.

With his first single, I’ll Be on Your Mind, released on Peterson’s Brownswood label, Beardmore established himself as an enigmatic presence, his vocals filtered through a haze of reverb, the DIY video – self-filmed, costing £10 – fragmenting his body into a paint-covered collage. The cut-and-paste of collage reflects his musical style, blending psychedelia with pixelated drum patterns on Spit/Swallow, or wonky R&B on I Just Wanna Be Your Prisoner.

On his latest single, No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish, this unexpected mix of styles comes to the fore. Referencing the racism of 1950s British boarding houses, as well as Beardmore’s own experiences of xenophobia, the single also nods to London’s broken beat scene in its propulsive, incantatory melodies. It’s an unlikely combination, but it works.

Speaking of his creative process in an interview last year, Beardmore said: “It’s a kind of therapy – I need to do it rather than want to do it.” It’s this urgency that should see his sound break from the murky waters of its genesis up on to the surface.

All words courtesy of The Guardian’s Ammar Kalia.

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