Tomos Gibson

The amount of Welsh artists is slightly surprising once you look into it. It’s more surprising to find that the amount of musicians from North Wales is so small you can barely find any. Even in that small community, there is a new generation of young musicians and we were able to get in contact with one talented artist. We were able to interview Tomos Gibson, an 18-year-old artist with great potential. What do you think your biggest inspirations are? “I guess that could go two ways. So in terms of what inspires me in my personal life, I guess it would be people and relationships mostly. Things that have a great impact on you emotionally, you want to write about those things. But in terms of other music that inspires me, I mean my biggest inspiration is Taylor Swift. She’s always been lyrically and melodically and also in terms of production-wise who she works with. She’s always who I’m sort of referencing in my songs and taking inspiration from but then I’d also go with Lana Del Rey and Joni Mitchell, two great American writers in my opinion. But also sometimes I love just a sort of carefree poor pop song. It’s good to have variation.” Also in terms of your music, how do you generally do your creation process? Like how do you come up with the ideas? Is it the music first? Lyrics? “I always found that question to be interesting because I know some people start with lyrics and start with melody and I try to do both, like to write a poem and add music to it or to write a piano melody and add lyrics to it. It’s weird but my best songs sort of come at once. So I’ll be walking down the street or whatever and a phrase, a lyric and a melody will sort of come into my head. Then I’ll get my phone out and I’ll record it into my voice memos and then I’ll sort of develop it from there. But also sometimes I like to start with a title or a concept. That’s always a good way ‘cause then you’re forcing yourself to write about one specific thing instead of all these ideas, you’re focused on writing about that concept which is a good writers exercise.” Have you ever performed live before? And if so what was it like? “Yeah I mean I guess, performing live it’s… I could say that I’ve been performing live since I was like three years old. You could say that in terms of competing at the local Eisteddfods and competing at school competitions or whatever. But my performing live as an artist would have been… well probably I guess last year. Or a few years ago I opened for the Welsh band Bwncath, they are very prolific now and I also opened for Fleur de Lys last year as well. At that time I found it very nerve-wracking, always made myself sick before but now I love it, it’s fun.” Is there any ongoing projects? Or upcoming music you’d like to share? “For sure, so for my final project at college, I want to do something different which was to write and record a song for another vocalist. So my friend Keila from the first year, who I think is an amazing singer and close friend, I thought it’d be a cool idea to work with her. So I’ve been writing and producing a song for her which I guess is being released soon, I have no idea but I think so. So that’s cool to be able to do it with someone else. That song is called ‘Kissing Strangers’ and it’s… well first of all it’s in English which is the biggest difference from my two other songs. I feel like the two songs I’ve already released, they were very different and this is also very different so I guess that’s the sort of pattern. So that’s one thing I'm working on and the other things I’m working on are sort of my own music again which is this time more strip back and I’d say more personal and again in English. I wanted to do it in English to branch out to a wider audience.”