Desmond Star

Biography

Star was born in Neath on 7 February 1983 and brought up in Resolven, a small former mining village located in the Vale of Neath. He was given the nickname 'Star' at college in Port Talbot. It means 'a good guy' in the local slang. However, he initially recorded under the name 'Chav Boy', later foreshortening it to 'The Boy', to reflect a somewhat unassuming attitude to his music.

He tried out his songs on live audiences, gigging in Wales with a loose band of friends, and began to attract a following when DJ Adam Walton played some of his home-recorded songs on the BBC Radio Wales new music show, The Musical Mystery Tour, for which 'The Boy Band' played a live session. Interest from record companies followed but A&R executives insisted he change his name. In response he adopted his nickname specifically because it sounded pretentious. It was a deliberate 'spin-on-this', an intentionally ironic counterpoint to music that is anything but pretentious.

Having come across the records of Daniel Johnston, an American singer-songwriter with an idiosyncratic approach to recording, Star decided he could do without money for equipment or studio time. A good song would always shine through its production. So he started working out songs on a Dictaphone, progressing to an 8-track and finally a multi-track hard disc recorder as he added increasingly sophisticated layers and textures to his songs. He found he had hundreds of ideas for songs so he shut himself away in a 5 ft x 5 ft room for a year, obsessively making music.

On 18 October 2010, being unaware of the Saint Etienne album of the same name, Desmond Star released an album called Boxette, which apart from the music it contains is remarkable for being the longest-playing debut album of all time. The album's 124 songs play for 400 minutes and are formatted onto 10 CDs packaged in a hard case decorated with Star's own artwork.

A second album, Second Declaration, was released on 20 December 2010 on the independent Bullhit Records label. This digital album (retailed as a download from online stores rather than as a CD or vinyl album from record stores) comprises 51 songs and plays for 182 minutes. Like Boxette, the songs, which were written and recorded over a six-month period, are arranged in chronological order.

Discography