David Byrne, Kate Bush, John Cale, Elvis Costello, Pet Shop Boys, Van Dyke Parks, The Beach Boys, Laurie Anderson...TS Eliot, Edward Albee, Brett Easton Ellis, Jeanette Winterson, RD Laing, James Joyce, Edward Bond, Vladimir Nabakov...Rene Magritte, Sol Le Witt, Mark Rothko...and increasingly architecture, mathematics and diagnostic critera (DSM-IV-TR). I also deeply admire Charlie Chaplin for fluid movements and a commitment to socialism.
Sounds Like
A kind of pretentious end-of-the-world disco with bring-your-own colouring books and vitamin pills. A sort of camp, cerebrally-outraged bleak indignation of what we are doing with the odd Rabelaisian term of endearment thrown in.
Having studied music (including various things from gamelan to medieval opera to dadaist-stylee singing) at Unviersity of York, I found myself singing Dusty Springfield and Puff the Magic Dragon in a variety of sushi restaurants and gay bars in Edinburgh, followed by a stint of music therapy (soon to be repeated). Having found the wonder of Bristol, I study a Masters in Social Work (Mental health) by day, and by night I appear as bass/guitar/keyboard/flute/violin player extraordinaire in the wonderful hmnahmna (www.myspace.com/hmnahmna), and as a solo person I sing around the place and at the minute am recording an album (in my tradition, of the bedroom variety) about nuclear paranoia, and the various cultural/poltical philosophies attached to militarism and individualism. There's obviously links to sex in all of it, of course...Previous albums include Adventurene (2001), Beheading a Lady (2001), Odd Potatoes (2003), Green (2004), The Peculiar Stresses and Strains of Modern Life (2005), The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock and The Wasteland (2006). New album now almost certainly called "Perfection and the Bomb".
Have also entertained the world with solo performances at LadyFest, some festival at Queens Square (where I sang Wuthering Heights and by god it was cool), Spike Island, Star FM and more recently the rather bizarre Robofag in Cardiff.
Concert performance of The Wasteland at the Folkhouse, June 3rd 2006 with Peter LeCouteur and Sofia Gradin.
Upcoming projects currently toying with (after I'm done saving the world from emotional distress) include a J-pop version of Knots by RD Laing and maybe an opera of American Psycho.
We just recently finished our EP and are so proud, all the hard work payed off! If you have a few minutes please give it a listen and tell us what you think :)
"Exciting, Striding and assured. It has an energy reminiscant of everything that was good about the Klaxons debut album.." - BBC Radio Bristol.
"The overall sound echoes that of Bloc Party but with greater conviction and sophistication. Go see them live if you can." - iTunes review.
It's also available to buy through our website and itunes if you really do like it.
Just to let you know about an extra-special New Root gig on Saturday 31st May @ The Croft, Bristol.
We're doing a headline set featuring Visual Projections from VJ James Bragg and everyone gets a FREE copy of our new 'Sick of Me' EP on the door. Venue Magazine described it as '...an extraordinary sound...a sort of power pop/goth/rock opera hybrid...the most exhilarating thing we've heard all week'.
There also support from Sally-Anne Langton - 'one of Bristol's most promising singer/songwriters' - plus Special Guests. All for £5. You can buy tickets in advance from www. thenewroot. com
Thanks and hopefully see you there on Sat 31st May!
Out of like the fifty million people of the united states, why did you send me a friend request? Regardless, and either way, your tracks are fuckin sykk!!!
Thanks for being a friend to the World in Common project. Come by to check out our website (http://www.worldincommon.org/) and feel free to join our yahoogroup(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WiCopendebate/) And Don't forget to visit our blog, Spaces of Hope (http://spacesofhope.blogspot.com/)_and our journal, Common Voice (http://www.cvoice.org/)
