Caroline's Jasper Llewellyn signs to Rough Trade and unveils debut solo single, "For the Teacher"

Speaking about the song, Llewellyn explains: “I wrote some parts of ‘For the Teacher’ years ago and others in the days just before recording. Like all of the songs I have written, what this song is ‘about’ somehow arose, like a vague spectre, out of various collisions of sounds and atmospheres and texts and everything else, sometime over the writing, recording, mixing process. The song is a big patchwork of different ideas and eras of me writing songs spanning 5+ years but there is a common thread that has come to run through all of the parts: ideals; how we grasp for them; how they remain beyond us. Spiritual ideals. Ideals of friendship. Of romance. Of ethics, of being a force for good in the world. Something about the koan of reaching for something more than you ARE now when all you have IS now and reckoning with the fact that it is in this ‘reaching for’ that what you are grasping for seems to move further away."

"‘For the Teacher’ is in many ways for my Buddhist teacher, Maitreyabandhu - an offering of sorts," he continues. "His poetry forms the text of the first 2 minutes or so of the song [not in the radio edit version]. His text is from a beautiful, soon-to-be-released book-length poem: a eulogy to his teacher, Bhante Sangharakshita. How to adequately express your feelings about this person who had such a seismic and unique effect on your life? This song acknowledges that lineage of teacher-disciple, teacher-disciple. This song is for both of these Teachers."

Following the single, Llewellyn will embark on his first run of solo live dates this autumn. He will be supporting My New Band Believe in Europe, in addition to headline shows in New York City and London, with shows booked for Horse Hospital on 6 November and Café Oto on 9 November.