TOURIST

Tourist, the UK songwriter and producer, performs live on the WTF Clubbing stage of NOS Alive’24 on July 12.

William Phillips has dedicated the past decade to exploring the nuances of beats and melodies in electronic music. Raised in London, his early exposure to rave music and iconic artists like Daft Punk and The Chemical Brothers shaped his musical evolution.

As Tourist, he boasts four albums, a diverse portfolio of remixes, and a Grammy Award for co-writing Sam Smith’s ‘Stay With Me.’ The profound experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the loss of a close friend and the arrival of fatherhood, inspired Tourist’s 2022 album Inside Out. This tender work, marked by swinging garage grooves and French filter house melodies, captures the interplay of grief and joy. Recognizing that his audience values his music as a cohesive journey, Tourist will be releasing his fifth album in 2024.

Departing from explicit autobiography, the album explores a mood-based, instinctive style influenced by shoegaze, psychedelic music, and the collagist nostalgia of The Avalanches. Tourist’s shift away from dancefloor-centric tracks to “wordless songs” designed for closer listening. The immersive experience, blending folk vocals, synth lines, and nostalgic melodic house ambience, creates a captivating yet disorienting sonic landscape.

Tourist envisions this latest chapter as a place listeners revisit frequently, discovering new nuances with each return, reflecting his unyielding pursuit of the perfect song, which arrives at the WTF Clubbing stage on July 12, of NOS Alive’24.