Ed Dowie

Ed Dowie

Ed Dowie is a UK musician associated with indie pop, electronic, art pop and synth pop. He begins making music in the late 1990s as one third of Brothers in Sound, a Parlophone act, before recording solo under the name Redarthur. After a five-year break, during which he lives in university libraries and music technology labs making electronic sounds, he joins The Paper Cinema, a puppetry, animation, theatre and music project that tours internationally and in Hackney.

Solo work

He later performs and records under his own name, combining experimental methods with melodic writing. His debut album, The Uncle Sold, appears in 2017 and receives strong critical notice, with praise from The Quietus, The Skinny and BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction, which includes it among its albums of the year. Lauren Laverne also describes the record as “absolutely extraordinary”.

The Obvious I and musical background

The Obvious I appears in 2021 and shows a clear shift from his earlier work. Dowie draws on a wide musical background that includes singing as a chorister in Dorset and learning piano from his father, who composes choral classical twentieth-century music. After Brothers in Sound ends, he studies Music, Technology and Innovation at De Montfort University in Leicester, where his first module introduces him to minimalist composers including Morton Feldman, Pauline Oliveros and La Monte Young.

The album is co-produced by Leafcutter John Burton, an experimental British musician and occasional member of Polar Bear.