Formerly known as Bearface, Brockhampton’s most enigmatic member, the mercurial artist has reemerged with new music, new visuals and a new name.
“K Bar”, the lead single from Ciarán’s forthcoming debut solo album, Roísín, out tomorrow on 6th November via Ninja Tune, landed on YouTube in the heat of summer. Three minutes and 33 seconds long. Now, I’m not in the business of angel numbers, but a quick dig and you’ll soon discover that 333 signifies growth, creative communication, and divine alignment. For an artist making his long-awaited return, this chance happening feels ultimately serendipitous.
“Yeah, no, complete accident,” he laughs, an Irish-American twang slipping through. “That’s cool to know, though. I feel like things like that are so magical, when it is a total accident.”
While the timestamp might have aligned by chance, his come-up was more deliberate. At 18, he began uploading hazy, R&B-tinged experiments to SoundCloud and Bandcamp, offering an early glimpse of the sound that would later win him a devoted following. In his early twenties, a visit to New York and a meeting with producer Romil Hemnani, connected him with the group. His alluring, husky vocals soon became a signature, often entrusted with bringing their songs to a sonically charismatic close. Vocal stints on “DISTRICT” off iridescence, as well as those wonderful ballads that would end “WASTE”, “SUMMER” and “TEAM” throughout the SATURATION trilogy. Like the teammate you pass to to get the ball to the back of the net, Ciarán brought an understated finesse to the song’s final bars.
When Brockhampton officially disbanded in 2022, mourning bells rang out for fans of the band. It was only three years before that the group hit commercial heights with their album GINGER and its leading pop gem single, “SUGAR”, which racked up over half a billion streams. The mostly silence that ensued signalled a split that was inevitably the best decision for the band members, Ciarán, then-Bearface, included. “It’s been great taking a lot of the stuff that I’ve learned from being in a band and applying it to my own stuff in certain ways. Then in others, being able to be totally free by myself and take something I made one day with some friends and go from there by myself,” he says.
The break-up offered him something he hadn’t yet had much room for: reflection, and therefore freedom. From the outside, it’s easy to underestimate the quiet sacrifice that goes into making music as one cog in a bigger machine. The output may have been loud and substantial, but, depending on the deal you cut, it leaves little space for oneself. As seemed to be the case for Ciarán. “I’m a very quiet person. I like knowing what I’m doing,” the Belfast native says knowingly, reflecting further on his time in the 13-piece music and visual collective. “Stepping away from the band allowed me to revisit things that I was already into, by myself, before that. But when I was caught up in the storm of it all, you’re very much like, ‘This is the only thing that I can focus on right now.’”
For Ciarán, this new solo chapter is about finding the space to listen. Away from the demands of the group, he can follow thoughts and instincts without having to turn it into something, and rediscover what making music felt like on his own terms. “It was comforting in a way, being able to go back to a lot of interests that I had previously [before joining the group], and still had during it. I just didn’t have the time to really sit with things and go at my own pace, or dive back into things that way.”
From “Chevy” to “K-Bar”, the penultimate “Dummy” and “RED 99”, that distinctive sonic sensibility comes through on his debut solo album. The music feels grungy, a little rough around the edges, but maintains its soul. Slicked by screeching guitar riffs, his soft, agile vocals reverberating over seamless, considered production. “I’ve been working on music pretty consistently for the past four years now,” he says. “I spent a lot of time diving into each aspect of making a song, every component that adds up to a song, a lot deeper and longer.”
Nurtured by the likes of Bilal, Prince, Outkast and Sly and the Family Stone, artists who helped blur the boundaries between R&B and hip-hop, their largely drum-driven songs left their mark on Ciarán. Elsewhere, “Houston” feels D’Angelo-esque. Between growls and a slow groove, it’s a jazzy track that sizzles with cheek and taunt, sensuality and sass – a side of Ciarán that has largely been kept under his hoodie. Now, it’s risen to the surface. And the result sounds freeing.
Ciarán has refined his sound and approach. “RED 99”, the most recently released track from the record, is sweetly nostalgic with a timeless edge. It mirrors the traditional structures of an old-school soulful ballad, only decorated with tyre screeches and ascending and descending slides down electric scales, fizzling out to delicate acoustic strums. There is a distressed thread running through the record, which then becomes smoothed out. In the end, we hear him reaching this peaceful sonic equilibrium.
And after four years largely out of the spotlight, save for the occasional appearance at a gallery here and a gig there – often identified by his hood up, shaggy hair falling out of its frame – Roísín feels like a homecoming. Not simply a return to music, but to himself. And this is where the album title arrived. “It was such a fucking annoying thing – I felt like I had a rock in my shoe for ages,” he laughs. “Particularly when you’re making an album, if it doesn’t feel like an absolute, ‘Oh fuck that’s it’, then it’s just gonna bug you – which it kind of was.” The eventual choice was rooted in something closer to home. Real name Ciarán Ruairidh McDonald, he explains that “Roísín was going to be my middle name if I was a girl”. He continues: “My mom said my name was going to be Ciara Roísín – my name is Ciarán Ruairidh. I always thought Roísín’s a really beautiful name.”
On Roísín, however, the idea of “enough” can’t really be applied. It’s full-bodied because, evidently, he put his entire being (and learnings) into this. Production-wise, something he’s been nurturing behind the scenes while we couldn’t physically hear him (vocally), that sense of contentment is fully formed on “Claddagh”. Carried by the siren-like vocals of Brooklyn-born-and-raised singer Embaci, the two were introduced by Ciarán’s friend and collaborator Roy Blair, who sent him a song by Chuquimamani-Condori, which she featured on. The two connected immediately upon him reaching out to the Trinidadian artist on Instagram. “Her voice is great. She has such a strange ear for melodies that I really love,” he says. “We’ve met once, worked once, and that was the song. It may have been about an hour and a half of working together.”
That’s a lot of Ciarán’s methodology. Though he certainly gets chattier when speaking about the parts of the job he loves the most – the production dynamics, the instrumentation, the sound – his strategy is rooted in simplicity. “I hate over-explaining things, and I don’t like when I see other artists over-explain something they’ve made,” he shares. “So much of that joy in music and art is not only ascribing your own meaning, but trying to figure it out yourself. It’s akin to trying to do a puzzle, and then saying, ‘This is too difficult, I’m gonna look up the answers.’ The joy and excitement is figuring it out for yourself, or thinking you figured it out – what makes it yours, and stick with it.”
And whatever he’s doing is undoubtedly him. “I’m excited for the freedom of being able to make whatever I want after that [its release] – whenever, wherever and however,” he says. “This album is still me making what I want to make. But in how I put it out and things like that, it had to be rigid and specific and intentional.” So, with the one shot he felt he had to spark people’s curiosity post-Brockhampton, he’s made the album that he feels was a long time in the making. And though he hopes that people will enjoy listening, it’s his own feelings that matter more. “Now that I’ve put the thing out, I’ve broken the seal, in a way, so I can be free to do whatever the fuck I want to, really.”
Listen to “Roísín”…
Words – Aswan Magumbe
