For multidisciplinary artist, MC and choreographer Tom Heyes, Blackhaine is both an artistic alias and shorthand for the “dark, hateful place” that his work is channelled from. Approaching sound, image, movement and poetry with the same visceral energy, Heyes seeks to transform the grey, bleak landscapes he associates with his birthplace of Lancashire and his native Manchester into sites of creative catharsis, elevating stories of depression, deprivation, substance abuse and small-time gangsters into vital transmissions from Britain’s darkest depths.
At once confrontational and intimate, Heyes probes the limits of rap machismo, street poetry, experimental dance and, ultimately, what it means to be an artist from a working class background. He offsets aggression, braggadocio and nihilism with intense vulnerability and unrefined honesty, a dichotomy with which he is able to bring together a dizzying array of influences, from Moor Mother and Playboi Carti to William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Stripping away convention, Blackhaine seeks to replace his own limitations, both physical and emotional, with an armour of a paler shade.
Alongside All Choreographers Are Bastards, a “deconstructive project” and art collective that includes the artists Joseph Reay-Reid (Bruxism), Joss Carter, Louis Ellis, Nathan Goodman, Sam Brown, Liam Morgan and Tim Merrifield, as well as frequent collaborators Rainy Miller and Rawtape, Blackhaine emerges among the vanguard of Manchester’s art and music scene. Heyes recognises this as a new movement exploding from the city, one that cements it as one of the most thrilling creative capitals in the world.
For the first Fact Residency of 2021, we have explored the unique practice of this singular voice, an artist who continues to make himself heard in whichever crowd he turns his attention to. Listen to what he has to say.
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