The youngest of six children, Dom Chapman was influenced by the records and CDs he borrowed from his older siblings, Cat Stevens, James Brown, The Jam and The Fall were all absorbed into his collection. Dom wrote his first song on the inside of a shoebox lid aged 5, and he’s had ‘sole’ ever since!
A move to London saw Dom Djing at clubs and singing and remixing with underground dance act Scope. With his bleached blonde ‘visual catchphrase’ hairdo Dom was spotted and landed a film role starring alongside Dame Judi Dench in, the all-star BBC/HBO film, The Last of The Blonde Bombshells. Soon afterwards, Dom’s new band MacArthur were signed to Dave Stewart’s Artist Network label and recorded their eponymous debut, working with Funkadelic’s Gary ’Mudbone’ Cooper, former World Party and La’s drummer Chris Sharrock and top producer Ash Howes. With the album ready to go, promo shot and plans for world domination made, Artist Network collapsed with financial difficulties. So instead of hitting the streets, the album landed on the desk of the official receivers and was the subject of a 3-year rights battle that ended successfully in August 2006.
After a brief time at writing pop songs to order, Dom set out to write a collection of songs he truly believed in. During the process he suffered a series of devastating bereavements and life changing experiences that had a profound effect on him and his creative process.
The result was 2006’s self-produced solo debut UNEXPLODED BOMBSHELL. Now reborn as CHAPMAN, he was tired of the machinations of the music business and released it on his own Creating Reality label without management or the backing of a PR company. Built from just piano or guitar, warmed with orchestration, UNEXPLODED BOMBSHELL is a deeply personal recording with simple arrangements and beautiful melodies, delivered by his truly unique vocal.
Within weeks his myspace was inundated with friend requests, the first run of the album sold out and itunes downloads went through the roof. People found themselves able to relate to many of the themes that the album contained, BBC Radio 2 and BBC local Radio were bombarded with emails and calls when ‘It’s Not Goodbye’ was aired on the stations.
A series of successful gigs throughout the UK followed and in early 2007 Dom decided to take on a manager to help him build on his success. With the promise of a single release, he sank his own money into a promo for ‘Burning Bridges’ unfortunately the manager and his promises evaporated, along with the single.
So in the summer of 2007 CHAPMAN headed for the South Coast of England to record the follow up to ‘Bombshell’ - THE AMPLIFICATION OF MR. BALLAD. Due for release in Spring/Summer 2008 it promises to be not necessarily an increase in volume but an expansion and a widening in the themes explored.
Unexploded Bombshell is available at CD Baby, itunes Music store and through myspace.com/unexplodedbombshell and domchapman.co.uk
The promo to ‘Burning Bridges’, the single that never was, can be viewed through YouTube and on this page.
THE AMPLIFICATION OF MR. BALLAD is out Autumn 2008
.
..
