Aelph

Aelph Edgewood is a singer/songwriter, a multi-media artist and a producer, who enjoys making music and art that affects people at a deep soul level, and takes them to strange and interesting places.

She was born in Kensington, London and moved to Africa at the age of six, finally returning to England at the age of seventeen. As a child she was trained in classical piano and singing, and took part in many eistedfords and musical plays as a child. She also learned to play guitar whilst at school. As a very young child she started playing by ear and was therefore encouraged to take it further by her mother, Vivienne. Aelph would credit her mother with being the person who inspired her to draw and paint, and was always an encouraging influence in getting Aelph to develop her talents.

Over the years Aelph has passionately enjoyed an enormous variety of music; The music she has made reflects these influences, such as rock, punk, drum and bass, folk, reggae (especially dub), electronic, ska, trance dance, idm, heavy metal, tribal, classical, funk, rap and space-rock and she is very fond of obscure and interesting independent artists and bands who are willing to take risks and experiment with their sounds. Her heroes whilst growing up were Kate Bush, David Bowie and Bob Marley, who all struck deep chords within Aelph. Another one of Aelph's heroes was her singer/songwriter father, Denis Edwards, who remained in England after her parents split up when she was a small child, and who Aelph idolised from a distance, having no contact with him until returning to England as a young adult.

In her mid-teens, she used to frequent a night club in Cape Town called "Scratch", named after the mad genius Lee Scratch Perry; it was a multi-racial club, which broke the law at the time by allowing people of all races to mix together, and was frequently harassed by the local police as a result. The club itself introduced Aelph to an incredible array of underground music from all over the world, and was a big part of her musical education. As someone who had suffered racial abuse as a result of having a dark complexion, whilst being brought up in a white middle class community, it was nice for her to find somewhere she felt so at home. It was revealed to her years later that she had Indian blood - a fact that was hidden from her and her community whilst growing up.

Aelph was brought up in a strict Christian household, but was struck by the hypocrasy of the church and its members at an early age, and rebelled against it strongly as a teenager. Her family on her mother's side were spiritualists in days gone by, and the family house where she spent every weekend as a child when she was looked after by her Irish grandmother was very haunted indeed...it was the place where they used to hold seances around the big family table, and summon up spirits who had passed over. Although these practices had stopped by the time she stayed there, the place was still echoeing with many spirits. As a very young child Aelph used to play with invisible beings of some sort, which scared her mother a lot.

Over the years Aelph has immersed herself into absorbing as much as she can about the secrets of life and death, studying and practising things such as magick, meditation, tarot, scrying, shamanism, astrology, numerology, soul-diving, herbalism, colour therapy and aromatherapy. She has always had a very thin skin, and cares deeply about the way that animals and the earth are treated, and also the way that people treat each other. Aelph has studied religions, psychology, mythology and archetypal forces. She incorporates her understanding of everything she has learned into her songs, writing and artwork as her way of sharing what she has understood.

She has a very strong dislike of the "big brother" police state, and many of her songs deal with these issues.

She is certainly no professor, and has done all of her studies in her spare time, alongside her art, writing and music, whilst bringing up her two children, Jesamine and Felix.

Aelph makes music when she is inspired by an idea which excites her, and then slowly builds up the layers, sort of like musical painting, and endeavours to make each song reflect the essence of the idea or inspiration, often bringing lots of diverse elements into the mix, until it feels like the true essence of the idea has been captured. Her songs are not exactly your three minute throw away pop song...more like a strange and colourful journey through an enchanted ever-changing landscape.

Aelph's very first gig took place in the legendary Batcave club in London, which was her favourite "haunt" at the time. It was a very strange and interesting gig involving musicians from various well-loved bands at the time including Jon Klein from "The Specimen". Not long after that she fell pregnant with her first child Jesamine, and abandoned the idea of gigging for quite some time.

She became friends with Frazer Clarke in the mid-eighties, doing some artwork for the underground magazine Encyclopedia Psychedelica, and attended many of their raves and other events.

She moved to Brighton from London at the beginning of the nineties with her daughter Jesamine and sister Lisa and whilst there did various different musical projects with people, joining the eco-warrior band "The Space-goats" for a short while. She also continued to busk - something she had started doing shortly before leaving London. Whilst in Brighton she met a woman called Ashera Hart and a man called Dan Beglan, and they all, together with one of Aelph's best friends Andrew Phillips moved to Glastonbury, where they formed a band called "Starbeast". Ashera, Dan, Aelph and her daughter Jesamine moved into a cottage in Low Ham some time later, where they continued to make music, and Aelph gave birth to her son Felix (in a birthing-tub) during this period. After a while everyone decided to go their separate ways and Aelph and Dan plus the two children moved around, living in various different locations in Somerset whilst home-educating the two children. All this time Aelph was continuing to write and record her songs. After being together for ten years, Dan and Aelph split up and in the process Aelph lost most of her recordings. Not being someone to give up easily, she decided to remake all her songs, and some of them were finally used on her first album "STATE OF INDEPENDANCE".

Shortly after her relationship with Dan had ended, whilst at a jam night at a local pub, Aelph started hitting it off with a brilliantly gifted man who played a mean guitar called Keiran Nelson, who was a chef at that particular pub, and who also hosted the jam night and ran events at the pub. He ended up moving in with Aelph after a while, and they became partners. Keiran contributed some lovely guitar tracks to Aelph's first three albums, although her latest creation called "The Shores Of Avalon" has been created by her alone. They and are still the best of friends to this day and still collaberate musically from time to time, although they are no longer living together.

Aelph is currently preparing for an art, film and music exhibition of her work in Glastonbury as well as a fashion show in which Aelph will be providing film and music as well as modelling. She is also working on a soundtrack for an up and coming film, as well as bringing her latest album to completion. Aelph's artwork, cards, cds etc can be purchased from some of the local shops in Glastonbury such as Venus, Gothic Image and The Speaking Tree amongst others. She also co-hosts a radio show called "The Space Between Your Ears", which is on Glastonbury Radio every Thursday at 7pm. If you would like to tune in, go to Glastonburyradio.com