Hailing from a sleepy seaside town between North Wales and Liverpool, The Wirral's Bill Ryder-Jones is a musical polymath with a decades-long career as a producer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and singer/songwriter with several acclaimed solo records to his credit.
In 1996, while still in his early teens, he became the lead guitarist for psychedelic pop outfit the Coral, with whom he spent 12 years, garnering 5 UK top ten albums in-between supporting the likes of Oasis and , before embarking on a solo career.
In 2011, Ryder-Jones released his full-length debut for Domino, If..., a chiefly orchestral record based on Italo Calvino's 1979 novel If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. The intimate and far more song-oriented A Bad Wind Blows in My Heart followed in 2013.
Written in his childhood bedroom at his mother's home and recorded in Liverpool, 2016's West Kirby County Primary was a deeply affecting album that delved into the singer's personal life. Returning in 2018, Ryder-Jones again looked inward on the introspective Yawn, a low-key guitar-based indie rock album whose themes revolved around everyday life situations.
Over the following years he began to serve as a trusted producer for other artists, working on records by Yard Act, Swim Deep, Our Girl, Michael Head, Gerard Love & Saint Saviour, whilst somehow also finding the time to become a touring member and studio guitarist for the Arctic Monkeys.
His most elaborately produced LP to date, 2024's Iechyd Da (a Welsh term meaning "good health") has propelled him from an artists' artist to a beloved figurehead of British songwriting, continuing his steady move up the UK album charts to hit the top 40, as well as a host of 2 & 3 spots in the specialist categories.
At times joyous and grand, at others intimate and heartbreaking, the past few years spent producing other artists has provided that gentle nudge to expand into new territory, from kids choirs and tender strings to dramatically re-contextualised disco samples.
'Iechyd Da feels a culmination of all he set out to do. It's a record that beckons you over and invites you in, that rewards your faith and careful listening with moments of extraordinary beauty, unflinching honesty, a sonic exchange of love' Laura Barton Uncut (9/10)
Over the course of the year, the more people seemed to agree with Barton's sentiment, touring with the inimitable Beth Gibbons and Gruff Rhys, selling out definitive, fully orchestrated performances of Iechyd Da at the Barbican and Liverpool Philharmonic Hall and being invited to perform works from it alongside the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Southbank Centre to kick off '25. In a time of high speed and high tech, it seems that the honesty and truth of this North Western artist seems to be a balm for the soul, and it's catching.
