Willis Earl Beal

Willis Earl Beal was born on the south side of Chicago, Illinois.[3] In his early twenties Beal joined the U.S. Army, moving to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Beal was medically discharged from the army due to intestinal and visual problems. He then returned to Chicago where he worked at Sears Tower, following a five-month hospital stay.[4] In 2007, Beal moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Here Beal spent some time homeless, and working entry-level jobs, notably as a night-shift security guard. During this time Beal began to record music, leaving CD-Rs in public spaces around Albuquerque. Beal would also leave self-illustrated flyers around the town in the hope of finding a girlfriend.[5] One of these flyers was discovered by Found Magazine who put Beal on the cover of their magazine.[1] Found later released a limited-edition box set called The Willis Earl Beal Collection, which included Beal's poetry, artwork and a 17-song album.[6] Through these flyers and the subsequent coverage in Found, Beal was contacted by more than 100 members of the public.[1] Beal participated in auditions for Simon Cowell's The X Factor television show, but dropped out of the "boot-camp" stage of the competition.[7]

Albums

• Acousmatic Sorcery (Hot Charity/XL Recordings, 2012)
• Nobody Knows. (Hot Charity/XL Recordings, 2013)
• Experiments in Time (self-released, 2014)
• Experiments in Time: The Golden Hour (self-released, 2014)
• Noctunes (Electric Soul Records/Tender Loving Empire, 2015)
• Turn (cdbaby/TMB Limited, 2017)
• Turn, Circle, Sun & Moon (cdbaby, TMB Limited 2017)
• ALMS (Bandcamp, cdbaby 2018)
• Morningstar (Bandcamp, Eyeless Records 2020)

EPs

• Principles of a Protagonist (BitTorrent, 2012)
• A Place That Doesn't Exist (self-released, 2013)
• Curious Cool (self-released, 2014)
• Flying So Low / 12 Midnight (TMB Limited, 2015) 7 Inch Single
• Through The Dark (Tender Loving Empire, 2016)
• A Chaos Paradigm (Tender Loving Empire, 2016)
• Circle (self-released, 2017)
• Sun & Moon (self-released, 2017)
• Sad Sam (Extended Player) (self-released, 2018)
• "Feel/You" (2017])7 Inch single
• "Dont You (Forget About Me)" cover
• "3 ANGELS"in collaboration with Druidance

In 2012, Beal signed a recording contract with Hot Charity, an imprint of independent record label, XL Recordings. Beal's first single for the labels, "Evening's Kiss" was released on February 17, 2012 and the accompanying music video was illustrated by Beal.[8] Beal's debut album, entitled Acousmatic Sorcery was released on April 2, 2012.[9]

• Official website