Dev Patel tells us about his obsession with Aldous Harding and Ben Howard
Dev Patel has revealed the artists he has recently been listening to “on repeat”.
The much-loved British actor and former Skins star was speaking to NME during an interview about his new film Monkey Man, which he wrote, directed and starred in.
“I’ve been listening to a lot of Aldous Harding,” he said, referring to the critically acclaimed singer-songwriter from New Zealand who has released four albums of indie folk music since 2014. “She’s like this kind of odd poet, super profound.”
“The lyrics catch you off guard. You know, ‘What if birds aren’t singing they’re screaming?’,” he said, quoting the title and first line of a track from Harding’s 2017 album ‘Party’. “I’m just, like, ‘Wow, that’s crazy.’ You can ponder on that for a very long time…”
Patel then revealed the second artist he has been loving recently: “This is folky but I’m an all-time diehard Ben Howard fan.” He added: “I listen to Ben Howard a lot. A lot.”
When asked if he’d ever met the ‘Only Love’ and ‘Old Pine’ singer, Patel responded: “No, I’d probably malfunction if I saw Ben Howard in person… [For] every film, I’ve got a Ben Howard song that encapsulates that whole experience… He’s just so nourishing.”
Patel has also recently developed an interest in vinyl, moving from being a “Spotify dude” to a physical record collection. “My friends and my partner have got me a little [record player] so I’ve been starting to collect vinyls.”
Later in the interview, Patel reflected on the “crazy” parties he went to as part of the cast of E4 teen drama Skins from 2007-2008.
“They did these commercials where they’d rent out these mansions or whatever and then just a bunch of kids, our age and older, would come and half of them were drugged off their faces, and [the crew] are like, ‘just… have fun’,” he said/ “It was insane. It was really, really insane.”
He continued: “I remember one of the best days of shooting they played Shy FX ‘Original Nuttah’ and they had this club scene and everyone was just going mental. I remember that because they played like 60 times and I was like a Kenyan dude in the Maasai Mara jumping up and down.”
‘Monkey Man’ is in cinemas now
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Alex Berry
NME
