Jayne Dent
interdisciplinary artist, musician, composer and producer
Jayne Dent of Me Lost Me delights in experimenting with songwriting and storytelling, creating a beguiling mix of soaring vocals and atmospheric electronics that playfully push the boundaries of genre. Led by Newcastle-based artist Jayne Dent who takes influence from folk, art pop, noise, ambient and improvised music, Me Lost Me's music has been described in The Guardian as "stripping folk back to its bones while letting its future echoes bleed out", and by BBC Radio 6's Tom Robinson as a "brilliant peculiar noise".
A prolific writer, with two crowdfunded albums under their belt: 'Arcana' (2018) and 'The Good Noise' (2020), which was included in Electronic Sound Magazine's Album of the Year list, they are now due to release their third album 'RPG' with Upset the Rhythm in July 2023.
Dent's work as Me Lost Me and beyond is driven by a desire to explore the concept of 'future folk' in an expansive sense across artistic discipline and platform, by not just incorporating storytelling and aesthetic motifs associated with 'folk', but by exploring the forums in which people tell their stories and modern myths today, and the resources and tools that are at hand. Other common threads throughout her work are an interest in site/landscape, technology and nature, often working across textiles, print and video collage as well as sound and music.
As a composer she has worked in collaboration with artists from across the creative spectrum, producing sound design and music for theatre, animation, film, podcasts and sound walks. Dent has notably performed live for BBC Radio 3's After Dark Festival and as part of the 2022 BBC Proms alongside Spell Songs, Royal Northern Sinfonia and the Voices of the Rivers Edge Choir. She recently received the prestigious Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Composers and was 2020-2021 Artist in Residence at Sage Gateshead.