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Robert Leslie was born in Manhattan in 1991 to mixed Dutch-English parents, and moved to Europe before his first birthday. He discovered music at an early age and was already singing on the streets of Amsterdam at eight years old. After graduating high school at seventeen he spent three months travelling through Europe, paying his way with street performances. A year of college did nothing to quell his wanderlust. A nasty breakup and a string of bad luck produced his first EP, So Long, and gave him the incentive to go back out into the world. In late 2011 he found himself back on the road, and has been travelling with his music ever since.

First there was Germany, England, Ireland and France. In Paris he met travelling companion William Seymour-Jones, and the two of them embarked on a wild few months culminating in North Africa. Robert documented this leg of his travels in his novel, Street Snakes, written in a shabby hotel in Sidi Ifni, a seaside town on the Atlantic coast in the south of Morocco. After completing the first draft of his novel the pair returned to Europe to tour Spain, Portugal, and France again. After a brief stopover in Amsterdam they continued on to Slovakia, wearing suits which became progressively dirtier as the weeks wore on. From Berlin onwards they hitched a ride with a group of hippies in a firetruck and ended up at the Slovakian "Rainbow Gathering", where they spent a number of weeks living in makeshift shelters in the woods. It was here that Robert began to write material for his second EP, Sense of Distance. He and William split up for a phase while Robert completed his songwriting in Prague, returning to Amsterdam via Leipzig to make the recordings. A few months later the EP was complete and Robert was off again, this time to the Canary Islands, to reunite with William. The two of them travelled from island to island and eventually took a small propellor plane to Layoune in the Western Sahara, racing up back through Morocco in a mad 2000-km dash to make it to Chefchaouen before the New Year. A few weeks later Robert was back in Spain, working on two music videos with a small Madrid studio and playing shows at a private bar in the city centre. The music videos each aired twice weekly on Spanish national TV between April and November 2013.



Listen out for October Song and other tracks by Robert Leslie on Skunk Radio Live Pop, Rock and Indie programs.