*THIS IS NOT THE OFFICIAL PETRA JEAN PHILLIPSON MYSPACE SITE!!*
Find Petra Jean Phillipson's official site @ www.myspace.com/petrajean
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*THIS IS NOT THE OFFICIAL PETRA JEAN PHILLIPSON MYSPACE SITE!!*
Find Petra Jean Phillipson's official site @ www.myspace.com/petrajean
♥♥♥♥♥♥
"A truly remarkable debut" - Sunday Times
"simple, sparse and very beautiful" - Uncut
"There is a dark magic at work here" - Q
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Although she laughs as she says it, Petra Jean Phillipson isn’t joking when she says she “wants to pull people all over the place emotionally” with her music. Listening to ‘Notes On Love’, this 32-year-old singer-songwriter’s exceptional debut album, you can see what she means. Records this honest and affecting are rare, but records which ensnare you from the start and leave you craving more, as this one does, are rarer still. Make no mistake; ‘Notes On Love’ is a dark and bewitching album from a major new talent set for great things.
If her soul-rich purr sounds familiar (there are shades of Billie Holiday) that’s because three years ago she found a kind of fame fronting The Free Association, that psychedelic punk-funk ensemble helmed by her producer friend, David Holmes, who lately scored Ocean’s Twelve. She met him through Martina Topley-Bird, a close friend who lived round the corner from her London home. One day he phoned her to ask if she fancied recording some vocals in LA with him. She went for a week and ended up staying three months.
She took a year’s art foundation course at St. Martin’s but loathed her pretentious peers, then enrolled in an art degree in Bath where she produced installations. Today she works as a conservator at St. Paul’s Cathederal.
While in Bath she ran a hip hop night called The Swamp where she would play a difficult mix of music, from Hazel O’Connor and the Beastie Boys to Blondie and The Specials, then going back to America for a Horse with No Name. She then learnt her trade in “all girl punk funk line ups” attracting interest from Fierce Panda, nailing vocals in one take and perfecting her guitar playing while travelling across the globe.
Falling particularly in love with New York, she tried to move there in order to make a record with the credible indie label Mush records, however, it wasn’t to be and her adventures across the Atlantic only fuelled her desire to write her own material. Once, on her 23rd birthday, she asked a stranger for directions to a restaurant for a celebratory meal. That person turned out to be that quintessential Englishman, Quentin Crisp, whom she adored. Five years on in the same city, she decided to ring him up and take him to lunch, as was customary for Crisp aficionados during his penurious twilight years.
Ask Petra why she thinks other artists like working with her, she says: “Because I just get really excited and enthusiastic. I like work, I love music and film, all those things, I really love them. And I love making things and I’m a bit crazy. I have to keep doing things otherwise I go totally mad, which means a lot gets made.”
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*THIS IS NOT THE OFFICIAL PETRA JEAN PHILLIPSON MYSPACE SITE!!*
Find Petra Jean Phillipson's official site @ www.myspace.com/petrajean
