Nick Mulvey shares video for 'Myela' - premiere

Singer-songwriter returns with this striking video directed by Majid Adin

Nick Mulvey (J Foxton)

Nick Mulvey is back and preparing to release his new album Wake Up Now, the follow-up to his 2014 debut First Mind.

He's released three singles so far: "Unconditional", "Mountain to Move" and "Myela" - the latter of which now has a striking video to accompany it.

It was produced with animation company BlinkInk and directed by Majid Adin, an Iranian refugee who lived in the Calais Jungle for six months. It draws on his personal experience after fleeing his home, travelling across Europe and coming to direct a music video for Elton John after winning a global competition.

Watch the video premiere for "Myela" below:

Q&A with Nick Mulvey

Tell us about "Myela"

The refugee crisis was something I couldn’t look away from. I felt I needed to do something, anything, to help and I also just needed to express my sorrow. I wrote this song in collaboration with musician friend Federico Bruno. Neither of us felt particularly worthy to write our own poetry about this situation - how could we pretend to understand the level of uncertainty that refugees must experience?

So we decided instead to explore firsthand accounts of refugees journeys and draw the lyrics from there. We wanted to give these stories a voice. We wanted to create work that would humanise them. A twelve-year-old boy from Nigeria called Deo Gratias said the lines ‘I’d rather die once in the sea than dying slowly every day that I stay’.

How did the collaboration with Majid Adin come about?

We partnered with Help Refugees UK on the release of this song (all profits the song generates go to them). They invited us to go to Calais to see the continuing situation there, meet some of the refugees and see for ourselves the work that they are doing there.

Whilst there, several people said ‘Majid should do the video for this song! Have you seen his work?’ He created the official video for Elton John’s "Rocket Man" and we were blown away by his visual re-telling of this song as an account of a refugees journey. We knew he’d be perfect to help with the Myela video.

What have you been up to since we last saw you?

I moved out of the city, became a father, and wrote and recorded my new album - Wake Up Now.

Asides from the album release, what are your plans for the rest of the year?

I’ve also got a dream to create ‘immersive’ versions of some of the album tracks and its becoming a plan.

The idea is to reimagine the material as environments rather than songs and to reconfigure the recordings as such, so you can ‘enter’ the track, inhabit it and walk around within it… The location will be something very special and the people I’m working with are geniuses. Watch this space…

What should fans expect from the new album?

It’s a new level for me. The recordings have quite a live feel, recorded with a group of musician friends all together. The songs are about big subjects, they don’t shy away from some hard topics like the refugee crisis, but ultimately, they celebrate the joy of being alive.

You must be looking forward to your UK tour - how did the festivals go this summer?

Summer festivals have been fun- it’s good to be out playing again- but I gotta say, I’m looking forward to having a soundcheck! Festivals are quite hectic- turn up, plug in and play- so having a degree more control at venues with our own crowd will be a welcome thing. It’s a new band, they’re all amazing players, and I’m itching to share this with the fans.

Wake Up Now is set for release via Fiction Records on 8 September - pre-order now. You can learn about the Help Refugees campaign here