Amelia’s Magazine | An interview with singer songwriter Phildel

Phildel by Laura Hickman
Phildel by Laura Hickman.

Singer songwriter Phildel celebrates the imminent launch of her debut album The Disappearance of a Girl with the launch of a special remix of her song Union Stone, created to accompany a video collaboration with ethical fashion designer Henrietta Ludgate (read more about her here), artist Sam Birch and choreographer Rachel Riveros. The film reinterprets the aeons old ritual of the Maypole dance, and will be performed live on 15th May during a gig at Bush Hall in west London. Watch it here:

I asked Phildel a few questions:

How do you create your music?
It involves quite a process – as I write the songs, compose the arrangements and map out the production before we go into the studio to record everything, each of those steps takes a while. I don’t try to write a song unless I feel overwhelmed by a strong kind of emotion, but when I am – I sit down at the piano, play the first note – and the melody just unfolds in my mind, I ‘hear’ what should come next…it’s organic and feels quite cathartic. Then the lyrics come to me in fragments – I don’t consciously try to think up lyric topics – I just let my subconscious or deeper ‘dreaming mind’ communicate. Often, the lyrics make no sense to me at first…but once a few months have gone by, I look back at the same lyrics and they make total sense in relation to what I was going through at the time. Whereas in the beginning I’d look at the lyric fragments and just think…“Really!? This makes so little sense to me!” Now I just trust it. I think that’s the amazing thing about psychology – we often don’t see our own patterns in the eye of the storm…but our dreaming minds, our imaginations – what some would call the subconscious – tends to be more aware and lets us know, through our dreams – how we’re feeling (resulting in things like stress dreams etc). But it’s not until we look back on it all through time that we have more conscious awareness.

Phildel - Press Shot
Once the song is written, I can start really imagining the kind of space, the colour, the world that the song exists in. And I begin to hear the spaces around the melody which I can fill with sounds that to me, represent key things about that song world. So for example, in The Disappearance of the Girl – the choirs towards the end represent ethereal water spirits. Choirs tend to represent loving ethereal spirits to me apart from in The Wolf and Storm Song where they represent the ‘chorus’ in a more Greek mythology kind of way…I don’t really pay much attention to genre – I’m more interested in finding the right sounds to paint the picture of the album world. Really, my main priority is to use sounds and instrumentation that serve the ‘spirit’ of each song.

Phildel Maypole Exclusive All
As we have a world full of possibilities – the process of selecting the best sounds for the job, then bringing them together and making them work together is a long one. Because some of these sounds are not conventionally used together and getting their frequencies to sit well in a mix, presents another range of challenges. It’s not like working with a conventional arrangement using say, a bass, a guitar and a drum-kit – where the way those sounds sit together in terms of frequencies is reasonably well mapped out. There are all kinds of different obstacles in achieving a great sound with an unconventional arrangement. So there’s a lot involved in the process on both creative and technical levels. 

May rituals By Briony jose
May rituals by Briony Jose.

Your debut album contains songs of resistance and escape, what inspired these themes?
From the age of 8 until 17 I lived in a house where I had no access to music. My mother re-married a religious fundamentalist, where as we had lived in a very liberal household with my father up until then – so there was a massive culture shock for me. I was forced to change my culture and identity completely. As well as the cultural change, my mother’s new husband was abusive. And so the experiences I had to contend with were dark – so I became used to escaping into my own imagination from a young age. I played piano at school lunchtimes, which I loved and so was able to nurture my passion for music that way.

Phildel
I suppose I always felt like I was living three different lives simultaneously – the lie of a life where I was forced to accept all these religious principles that I didn’t believe in and was told to remain silent about the abuse I was experiencing and witnessing, then the hours at school where I could preserve myself and my identity, and thirdly, my own identity within the world of my imagination – which was what really saved me. In that dream-world I could do anything I liked, I could exact revenge for everything I’d been put through. Songs like The Wolf capture that element of my world. Where as songs like Beside You capture the lighter, more enchanting side. The title of the album The Disappearance of the Girl for me represents disappearing from the liberal world of my birth, into a world of silence and restriction. It also represents my disappearance from reality into the refuge of my imagination. I think disappearing is a major theme for me.

Phildel  Maypole Stag
What made you decide to reinterpret the May Day rituals?
For a while now, I’ve wanted to explore the concept of the ‘ritual’ and how it manifests in communities as well as individuals lives. It’s a massive part of our psychology and comes up all over the place. I asked my supporters on facebook what rituals they had as individuals and I looked through cultures at various ritual celebrations. As May was approaching, it felt like the right time to explore the Maypole dancing ritual. It’s something that’s appeared through history and even popular culture in cult-classic films such as The Wicker Man. On top of this, I’ve always felt a deep connection to the land and nature. And so, I thought it would be interesting to create a re-interpretation of the Maypole dance in collaboration with other artists.

Phildel  Maypole Exclusive
Rachel Riveros choreographed the movements beautifully, Henrietta Ludgate adorned the dancers in her amazing collection, artist Sam Birch designed the set and Maypole and I created a bespoke arrangement of my track Union Stone to soundtrack the film. We ended up capturing many authentic details so in fact, we stayed quite true to tradition. I had a response from a Wiccan high-priestess in the US who said she was so pleased to see so much attention paid to detail, which was lovely.

Phildel Stag Girl
What prompted the collaboration with Henrietta Ludgate?
Henrietta Ludgate is an incredibly creative and visionary fashion designer. I’ve worked with her for a number of things, namely her first London Fashion Week presentation for which she asked me to supply the music for the catwalk – which I performed live for the runway. Her catwalk theme was an indoor installation of an enchanted forest. Her designs are beautifully structured – I really feel there’s a sense of the iconic about them – but they maintain a playful edge so have this really extraordinary balance. So, I felt like her collection would be perfect for the project as it would add a sense of iconic, sculptured form to the dancers whilst looking very fresh and playful. I asked her if she’d like to be involved and she and artist Sam Birch (who designed the set and Maypole), were both really excited about it. The Maypole was actually created by Sam Birch entirely out of ‘found’ items – and he crafted it to replicate a Birch tree which is what is traditionally used as the Maypole. 

YouTube Preview ImageStorm Song

What were the logistics of filming and when did you find such fine weather?
It’s actually a little cosmic. Because we all had Friday 3rd May down in our diaries for the filming…but it was overcast and rainy every single day of the week except for Wednesday 1st May –  traditionally the day to dance around the Maypole. And it was a truly glorious day, the sky was blue the entire time and loads of people came up to us to say how lovely it was to see the Maypole up on May 1st and on such a perfect day. With the glory of the weather, the date and performing the dance, everything felt so right, we were overjoyed with how well it all turned out.

YouTube Preview ImageBeside You

What next for Phildel?
We’re about to perform the Maypole dance live for my show at Bush Hall on Weds 15th May – so we’ll be erecting the 15 foot Maypole in the venue. After that, I’ll be performing live in Manchester and Bristol as part of Dot-to-Dot Festival followed by a performance at How The Light Gets In Festival of art, music and philosophy at Hay-on-ohe-Wye. Then I’ll be off to the USA in July for a collaboration with a great artist called Sleepthief amongst a few USA live dates. I’m also really looking forward to performing at Vancouver Folk Festival and Secret Garden Party both in July, before a show at Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August.

Phildel_headpiece
Randomly, my album track Holes In Your Coffin is on the Hollyoaks trailer on tv at the moment and a few radio stations will be giving it a spin over the next few weeks, so listen out for that one – I’m actually currently creating the music video for Holes In Your Coffin which will be a compilation of footage submissions from my supporters, who are helping me create the video, some outstanding submissions from those as young as 10 and 11 – so I can’t wait to make the video public.

YouTube Preview ImageThe Wolf

The Disappearance of a Girl is released on 3rd June, featuring twelve magical songs of resistance and escape, inspired by a period during Phildel‘s childhood when music of all kinds was forbidden in an oppressive household.

Categories ,Briony Jose, ,Bush Hall, ,dance, ,Dot-to-Dot Festival, ,edinburgh fringe festival, ,Henrietta Ludgate, ,Holes In Your Coffin, ,Hollyoaks, ,How The Light Gets In Festival, ,Laura Hickman, ,London Fashion Week, ,Maypole, ,Phildel, ,Rachel Riveros, ,Sam Birch, ,Secret Garden Party, ,Sleepthief, ,The Disappearance of a Girl, ,Union Stone, ,Vancouver Folk Festival, ,video, ,Wiccan

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Amelia’s Magazine | A Hawk And A Hacksaw

Rufus%20Wainwright%20Release%20the%20stars.jpg
Five albums in, medications malady and with only mild commercial success to date, it would be a reasonable assessment to describe Rufus Wainwright’s dramatic, theatrical pop as something of an acquired taste. For many, he over eggs the pudding , and then some. But whilst bold ambition may be a deterrent to some, his loyal fans will rejoice at this offering. This is classic Rufus, and whilst it wont be winning him many new fans, this simply doesn’t matter. This is a record to admire, it may even be his most satisfying work to date.

As expected, Wainwright offers up his usual mix of epic and restrained throughout the 13 songs, and there are a number of gems. Striking orchestration and characteristically high in the mix Rufus vocals lead us into opener Do I Dissapoint You. It is a brilliant opening song to set the tone for what is to follow. The diversity of instruments employed here alone is staggering, and like many songs throughout the album the arrangement is gloriously ambitious. The recurring operatic theme, present throughout all his previous work has been thankfully maintained.

First Single Going To A Town (which was B listed by Radio 2) follows. Its mournful tones echoing latter day Beatles balladry (think Fool On The Hill) and it features the albums most engaging lyrics. Amidst numerous misforgivings with his homeland, Wainwright again finds himself lost in the confusion of love and religion (another recurring theme here), “Tell me, do you really think you go to hell for having loved?” he pleads. For all the record’s grandiose, it is these moments of human insecurity that really strike a chord. It is also one of a number of outstanding vocals on the record.

The pace doesn’t let up throughout the opening half – Nobody’s Off The Hook, Between My Legs and Tiergarten sit easily amongst the artists best work. But, it cannot quite be maintained throughout the second half – a better focus on sequencing next time perhaps. But this is a minor gripe. With each listen, hidden depths are revealed, suggesting that this is a record that will endure also. It is a joy.

The%20Concretes%20Hey%20Trouble.jpg
Troubles! That’s exactly what the Concretes got into during the last year. One of the three founding members and nonetheless the lead vocalist of the band decided to quit to start her solo project Taken by Trees. If that was not enough the destiny decided to punish them furthermore and as a result they had all their equipment stolen during the U.S. tour. Quite a difficult time for a band, sildenafil isn’t it? However, The Concretes decided to look ahead and continue their career as a seven piece band, giving Maria Erikkson the difficult task to substitute the charismatic and easily recognisable voice of Victoria Bergsman.

Read more

Amelia’s Magazine | A post Tin Tabernacle interview with Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou

Jesca Hoop by Rebecca Strickson
Jesca Hoop by Avril Kelly
Jesca Hoop by Avril Kelly.

I love Jesca Hoop‘s new song City Bird and the accompanying video so much so that I decided to get in touch with both Jesca and Elia Petridis, side effects the director of her recent videos, sildenafil to find out what makes them tick. Elia Petridis runs boutique production company Filmatics in Los Angeles, California. After making several award winning shorts and music videos he is about to start shooting his first full length feature The Man Who Shook The Hand Of Vicente Fernandez. I think his incredibly detailed answers throw an intriguing light on what goes into the creation of a very considered and beautiful music video.

Jesca-Hoop-by-Liam-McMahon
Jesca Hoop by Liam McMahon.

When did you start working with director Elia Petridis?

Jesca: Elia is an old friend. We met in Los Angeles at one of my shows. He would say that he forced me to be his friend, which is kind of true though I would say that he used his clever imagination to lure me in. I’m glad that he did. The Kingdom was our first video adventure together.

Elia: A producer I’m working closely with these days said to me recently that humans are “meaning making machines” (a soundbite from some career seminar) but that phrase really resonated with me. I’m infatuated with screenwriting and personal mythologies, sometimes to the detriment of my own mental health. I grew up in Dubai for 18 years before moving to LA for film school – although Dubai had a lot of its own magic it didn’t have a music scene to speak of so I’m always a little astonished by the talent I find in LA. When I saw Jesca perform live I really felt her music was very special and otherworldly, and tried to do my best to see if, as human planets, we could potentially orbit each other and become friends. 

I would venture to say that the first time I saw Jesca Hoop live was one of the most astonishing musical moments I have ever witnessed. It was the night before Halloween and she came out in a marionette outfit, complete with rosy cheeks, and stood motionless while her back up players wound her up to life. For a visualist like me, a storyteller, it really had an impact. The whole endeavour of courting a friendship with her was kind of a lark for me because I honestly thought she had better things to do. It was just a matter of pushing the boundary between fan and friend and seeing how much I could get away with. Suddenly, unexpectedly, as with most of life’s wonder, we had some mileage behind us and had transformed into friends. I will tell you that the first *official* conversation, the ice breaker, was when she was writing Tulip – from the Hunting my Dress album – and I was writing a screenplay dealing with Tulip Fever in Holland so I leant her my reference material. I knew I had two opportunities to wiggle my way in there – one to give her the book, and one to get it back!   

Hunting my Dress
The Hunting My Dress album cover.

Where was City Bird shot and where did the inspiration come from?

Jesca: It was shot in a miniature haunted house in downtown LA. We both wanted it to be a ghost story and Elia was the one to bring the children’s narrative into it.

Elia: FALSE! The video was shot in a garage in Riverside, Ca. The whole thing was fractal – an infinite amount of information in a finite space, as the garage is attached to an 18th century ‘Painted Lady’ Victorian house owned by my fiance. So in essence, it was shot in a miniature dollhouse inside a bigger dollhouse which made the shoot utterly magic. I think what Jesca is communicating is that the story takes place in a miniature dollhouse in downtown LA. The whole thing was lit using candles and christmas lights. 

Where did the idea for an animated video come from?

Jesca: It came out of limitation really. We had very very little money for this video so we just mused about what we could do with what time and money we did have. I set a pretty hard task considering the resources available and I am delighted with what Elia and his team came through with.

Elia: To me, the track is seance folk. That’s the sonic iconography that City Bird evokes – a ghostly seance. When it comes to music and music videos I am not a literal thinker so although my mind knows the song is about the fright and sadness associated with homelessness that’s not what my heart feels when I hear the song, and it’s not what the dream theatre in my mind projects over it either. But here Jesca’s mastery shines through, because the sonic landscape, right down to the very physical shape her mouth is making around the lyric is just as important as what she’s trying to say; the two are organically woven together. The magic of Jesca’s music lies in the alchemy that exists between form and content. All my artistic heroes do this, from Chabon, to Spielberg; they use genre to sugar coat the pill. So here she uses the disguise of seance music to coat the literal message of homelessness she’s trying to communicate. 

Now, narrative is something I am always running away from when directing a music video. Whenever I read a music video treatment from some kid that went to film school it makes me cringe and I think the best music videos come from documentary filmmakers who get a chance to put forward a psychology of form rather than one of narrative. But, having said that, my instincts on City Bird were narrative, perhaps because it’s a kind of lilting waltz so it felt right to have a narrative to pull you through it.  So, for the treatment, I sat down and wrote an entire ghost story from scratch, in the style of Poe or Hawthorne. I even wrote nursery rhymes about the ghost, because ghost stories are mostly aural traditions.

On The Kingdom video Jesca had a ton of input because I quickly realised that it would only reach its full potential if I pretended to be a paint brush and let her grab hold of the crew through me and paint. Once I took my ego out of the equation I realised there was something special there I was meant to service, and honestly, that’s the best method of working with an artist on a music video, that’s what you really cross your fingers for, isn’t it? You can see a little more of that process on the behind-the-scenes doc of the kingdom here:

But for City Bird Jesca was in Manchester and we were in LA shooting. Her schedule was tight, and I was really flattered that she had enough faith in me to let me just go and shoot because I know how much she loves her songs and how much faith it took for her to let go a little. I had originally submitted an entirely different treatment to her and had kind of resigned myself to the fact I wasn’t going to do it, which was cool enough for me because god only knows how many talented people Jesca comes across in her travels. Surely, I thought, she can find people in the UK to make amazing videos, and surely, as an artist, she wants to go and do cool stuff with other cool people. So I thought I would just give it a shot. I submitted this treatment about metaphorical ghosts, which dealt with mis-en-scene of places that had just been left and abandoned – an unmade bed, plates on a table after dinner, a toilet still running, stuff like that, where humans had vacated the frame only seconds ago and you’d just missed them – kind of pretentious honestly. Then I came across my fiancée’s childhood dollhouse and started taking video and snapping pictures and all of a sudden this whole new idea came to mind of the dollhouse and miniatures and stop motion and ghosts. I sent the examples to Jesca and she totally fell for it! 

City Bird house
City Bird house.

Ghost stories are tricky because they are incredibly emotional stories surrounded in gothic imagery. Ghost stories like The Others, The Orphanage, The Sixth Sense, are rite of passage stories – they’re about letting go. About the dead letting go of the living and the living letting go of the dead. They’re NOT about the living being punished for a sin like horror movies, but about forgiveness of that sin from all parties, the relinquishing of unfinished business. And I wanted to nail that, I really did. In City Bird it is the boy who is at the centre of the story and has the rite of passage: the ghost is a sort of Frankenstein or Edward Scissorhands character. 

The boy has nightmares and makes up ghastly stories that paint the ghost as a demon, then something happens to the boy on his bike and he dies. We get those silent movie inter-titles: his tower (the city) is turned to a tomb. Shadows loom over his white coffin and he becomes a ghost, set into the underworld where he is refused and becomes a refugee with nowhere to go. It’s scary out there for a little boy so he returns to the ghost’s house and we realise that’s her purpose – she is a host for waywardly spirits like the dead boy. But he has been so scared of her, will he change? Can he let go of his fear of her? Can he muster up the courage to enter as she beckons him in? The song ends unresolved sonically so I wanted to leave the audience there just as the music does. The theme is that of judging a book by its cover and misunderstanding something: just as we pass the homeless on the street and pretend they are invisible like ghosts when they all have a real inner life. Can we let go of our prejudices and see beyond the stereotypes to see that the issues that made them homeless are ones that could very well come to prey on and haunt us at any time? That’s kind of the metaphor I was trying to get at. 

City Bird ghost
The City Bird ghost.

Who made the puppets and how long did the video take to make?

Jesca: I’m not quite sure actually… I should ask.

Elia: Everyone who was involved in making the City Bird video knew there was a finite time of ten days in which to create this beautiful, creative thing so necessity was to be the mother of invention due to the time constraints, and everyone really fed on that and brought their best to the project. My fiancee, Maranatha Hay, is an Emmy award winning documentary filmmaker who is piped into the most creative, kind, and daring community of filmmakers and her best friend Natalie Apodaca is an artist with experience in installations. I showed her Metropolis and told her we were going to build a monotone city from cardboard and she just went for it. Cosmin Cosma was my left hand man who insisted we use the Dragon Stop Motion software, which honestly was the main reason we were able to get the shots we needed in the time we had. 

The crew never lost faith in my direction, even when I had no idea how we would do it just ten minutes before the shoot. In the opening shot of the video there is a city cardboard diorama, the dollhouse, the puppet of the ghost AND the moon projected over the city! All those elements came into play because we just broke down the shot we had in mind element by element: that’s real filmmaking in a pure form. 99% of this video was done IN-CAMERA, like The Lumière Brothers! Then it was given that incredible aged look by Dan Geis, our after effects genius.

Jesca Hoop by Emma Lucy Watson
Jesca Hoop by Emma Lucy Watson.

I can tell you how the puppets were made, but I urge you to remember that cinema is like a magic trick. The home made feel is part of the fun of the viewing experience, especially the joy in realising that things like hair are actually twine. The doll’s arms are made of tiny painted tree branches, her spine is metal wire and her dress is made of muslin. Her face is tracing paper and is removable so that we could change her expressions from shot to shot. The part where the fork floats across the table had to be done with tweezers! (nudged lovingly one frame at a time by Maranatha)

The house was a nightmare. It is three feet tall and it took us 3 days to put it together from a flat box. We painted every part, so we had to know what the end product would look like before we even started. Luckily an architect friend, Dannon Rampton, showed up just to check out what was going on and got so enamoured with the dolls house that he ended up putting it together which is just as well since Natalie and I were clueless as to how we were going to do it. We painted it and then we had to DILAPIDATE IT so it looked old and haunted! We scrubbed it with metal brush, we broke its steeple and we stuffed miniature moss in all its crevices so that the ghost story would feel real and lived in. 

My motto is: make movies that can only be movies! Make movies that need that final step of the medium to fully realise the vision, because it’s such an expensive, time consuming endeavour that the content had better deserve and earn the medium. If it can be a song, a book, a play, let it be that. But film, film is reserved for the special stories that need the seven arts to make them whole. SO don’t give away our secrets if you don’t have to. 
Jesca Hoop by Avril Kelly
Jesca Hoop by Avril Kelly.

I love Jesca Hoop‘s new song City Bird and the accompanying video so much so that I decided to get in touch with both Jesca and Elia Petridis, drug the director of her recent videos, hospital to find out what makes them tick. Elia Petridis runs boutique production company Filmatics in Los Angeles, California. After making several award winning shorts and music videos he is about to start shooting his first full length feature The Man Who Shook The Hand Of Vicente Fernandez. I think his incredibly detailed answers throw an intriguing light on what goes into the creation of a very considered and beautiful music video.

Jesca-Hoop-by-Liam-McMahon
Jesca Hoop by Liam McMahon.

When did you start working with director Elia Petridis?

Jesca: Elia is an old friend. We met in Los Angeles at one of my shows. He would say that he forced me to be his friend, which is kind of true though I would say that he used his clever imagination to lure me in. I’m glad that he did. The Kingdom was our first video adventure together.

Elia: A producer I’m working closely with these days said to me recently that humans are “meaning making machines” (a soundbite from some career seminar) but that phrase really resonated with me. I’m infatuated with screenwriting and personal mythologies, sometimes to the detriment of my own mental health. I grew up in Dubai for 18 years before moving to LA for film school – although Dubai had a lot of its own magic it didn’t have a music scene to speak of so I’m always a little astonished by the talent I find in LA. When I saw Jesca perform live I really felt her music was very special and otherworldly, and tried to do my best to see if, as human planets, we could potentially orbit each other and become friends. 

Jesca Hoop by Rebecca Strickson
Jesca Hoop by Rebecca Strickson.

I would venture to say that the first time I saw Jesca Hoop live was one of the most astonishing musical moments I have ever witnessed. It was the night before Halloween and she came out in a marionette outfit, complete with rosy cheeks, and stood motionless while her back up players wound her up to life. For a visualist like me, a storyteller, it really had an impact. The whole endeavour of courting a friendship with her was kind of a lark for me because I honestly thought she had better things to do. It was just a matter of pushing the boundary between fan and friend and seeing how much I could get away with. Suddenly, unexpectedly, as with most of life’s wonder, we had some mileage behind us and had transformed into friends. I will tell you that the first *official* conversation, the ice breaker, was when she was writing Tulip – from the Hunting my Dress album – and I was writing a screenplay dealing with Tulip Fever in Holland so I leant her my reference material. I knew I had two opportunities to wiggle my way in there – one to give her the book, and one to get it back!   

Hunting my Dress
The Hunting My Dress album cover.

Where was City Bird shot and where did the inspiration come from?

Jesca: It was shot in a miniature haunted house in downtown LA. We both wanted it to be a ghost story and Elia was the one to bring the children’s narrative into it.

Elia: FALSE! The video was shot in a garage in Riverside, Ca. The whole thing was fractal – an infinite amount of information in a finite space, as the garage is attached to an 18th century ‘Painted Lady’ Victorian house owned by my fiance. So in essence, it was shot in a miniature dollhouse inside a bigger dollhouse which made the shoot utterly magic. I think what Jesca is communicating is that the story takes place in a miniature dollhouse in downtown LA. The whole thing was lit using candles and christmas lights. 

Where did the idea for an animated video come from?

Jesca: It came out of limitation really. We had very very little money for this video so we just mused about what we could do with what time and money we did have. I set a pretty hard task considering the resources available and I am delighted with what Elia and his team came through with.

Elia: To me, the track is seance folk. That’s the sonic iconography that City Bird evokes – a ghostly seance. When it comes to music and music videos I am not a literal thinker so although my mind knows the song is about the fright and sadness associated with homelessness that’s not what my heart feels when I hear the song, and it’s not what the dream theatre in my mind projects over it either. But here Jesca’s mastery shines through, because the sonic landscape, right down to the very physical shape her mouth is making around the lyric is just as important as what she’s trying to say; the two are organically woven together. The magic of Jesca’s music lies in the alchemy that exists between form and content. All my artistic heroes do this, from Chabon, to Spielberg; they use genre to sugar coat the pill. So here she uses the disguise of seance music to coat the literal message of homelessness she’s trying to communicate. 

Now, narrative is something I am always running away from when directing a music video. Whenever I read a music video treatment from some kid that went to film school it makes me cringe and I think the best music videos come from documentary filmmakers who get a chance to put forward a psychology of form rather than one of narrative. But, having said that, my instincts on City Bird were narrative, perhaps because it’s a kind of lilting waltz so it felt right to have a narrative to pull you through it.  So, for the treatment, I sat down and wrote an entire ghost story from scratch, in the style of Poe or Hawthorne. I even wrote nursery rhymes about the ghost, because ghost stories are mostly aural traditions.

On The Kingdom video Jesca had a ton of input because I quickly realised that it would only reach its full potential if I pretended to be a paint brush and let her grab hold of the crew through me and paint. Once I took my ego out of the equation I realised there was something special there I was meant to service, and honestly, that’s the best method of working with an artist on a music video, that’s what you really cross your fingers for, isn’t it? You can see a little more of that process on the behind-the-scenes doc of the kingdom here:

But for City Bird Jesca was in Manchester and we were in LA shooting. Her schedule was tight, and I was really flattered that she had enough faith in me to let me just go and shoot because I know how much she loves her songs and how much faith it took for her to let go a little. I had originally submitted an entirely different treatment to her and had kind of resigned myself to the fact I wasn’t going to do it, which was cool enough for me because god only knows how many talented people Jesca comes across in her travels. Surely, I thought, she can find people in the UK to make amazing videos, and surely, as an artist, she wants to go and do cool stuff with other cool people. So I thought I would just give it a shot. I submitted this treatment about metaphorical ghosts, which dealt with mis-en-scene of places that had just been left and abandoned – an unmade bed, plates on a table after dinner, a toilet still running, stuff like that, where humans had vacated the frame only seconds ago and you’d just missed them – kind of pretentious honestly. Then I came across my fiancée’s childhood dollhouse and started taking video and snapping pictures and all of a sudden this whole new idea came to mind of the dollhouse and miniatures and stop motion and ghosts. I sent the examples to Jesca and she totally fell for it! 

City Bird house
City Bird house.

Ghost stories are tricky because they are incredibly emotional stories surrounded in gothic imagery. Ghost stories like The Others, The Orphanage, The Sixth Sense, are rite of passage stories – they’re about letting go. About the dead letting go of the living and the living letting go of the dead. They’re NOT about the living being punished for a sin like horror movies, but about forgiveness of that sin from all parties, the relinquishing of unfinished business. And I wanted to nail that, I really did. In City Bird it is the boy who is at the centre of the story and has the rite of passage: the ghost is a sort of Frankenstein or Edward Scissorhands character. 

The boy has nightmares and makes up ghastly stories that paint the ghost as a demon, then something happens to the boy on his bike and he dies. We get those silent movie inter-titles: his tower (the city) is turned to a tomb. Shadows loom over his white coffin and he becomes a ghost, set into the underworld where he is refused and becomes a refugee with nowhere to go. It’s scary out there for a little boy so he returns to the ghost’s house and we realise that’s her purpose – she is a host for waywardly spirits like the dead boy. But he has been so scared of her, will he change? Can he let go of his fear of her? Can he muster up the courage to enter as she beckons him in? The song ends unresolved sonically so I wanted to leave the audience there just as the music does. The theme is that of judging a book by its cover and misunderstanding something: just as we pass the homeless on the street and pretend they are invisible like ghosts when they all have a real inner life. Can we let go of our prejudices and see beyond the stereotypes to see that the issues that made them homeless are ones that could very well come to prey on and haunt us at any time? That’s kind of the metaphor I was trying to get at. 

City Bird ghost
The City Bird ghost.

Who made the puppets and how long did the video take to make?

Jesca: I’m not quite sure actually… I should ask.

Elia: Everyone who was involved in making the City Bird video knew there was a finite time of ten days in which to create this beautiful, creative thing so necessity was to be the mother of invention due to the time constraints, and everyone really fed on that and brought their best to the project. My fiancee, Maranatha Hay, is an Emmy award winning documentary filmmaker who is piped into the most creative, kind, and daring community of filmmakers and her best friend Natalie Apodaca is an artist with experience in installations. I showed her Metropolis and told her we were going to build a monotone city from cardboard and she just went for it. Cosmin Cosma was my left hand man who insisted we use the Dragon Stop Motion software, which honestly was the main reason we were able to get the shots we needed in the time we had. 

The crew never lost faith in my direction, even when I had no idea how we would do it just ten minutes before the shoot. In the opening shot of the video there is a city cardboard diorama, the dollhouse, the puppet of the ghost AND the moon projected over the city! All those elements came into play because we just broke down the shot we had in mind element by element: that’s real filmmaking in a pure form. 99% of this video was done IN-CAMERA, like The Lumière Brothers! Then it was given that incredible aged look by Dan Geis, our after effects genius.

Jesca Hoop by Emma Lucy Watson
Jesca Hoop by Emma Lucy Watson.

I can tell you how the puppets were made, but I urge you to remember that cinema is like a magic trick. The home made feel is part of the fun of the viewing experience, especially the joy in realising that things like hair are actually twine. The doll’s arms are made of tiny painted tree branches, her spine is metal wire and her dress is made of muslin. Her face is tracing paper and is removable so that we could change her expressions from shot to shot. The part where the fork floats across the table had to be done with tweezers! (nudged lovingly one frame at a time by Maranatha)

The house was a nightmare. It is three feet tall and it took us 3 days to put it together from a flat box. We painted every part, so we had to know what the end product would look like before we even started. Luckily an architect friend, Dannon Rampton, showed up just to check out what was going on and got so enamoured with the dolls house that he ended up putting it together which is just as well since Natalie and I were clueless as to how we were going to do it. We painted it and then we had to DILAPIDATE IT so it looked old and haunted! We scrubbed it with metal brush, we broke its steeple and we stuffed miniature moss in all its crevices so that the ghost story would feel real and lived in. 

My motto is: make movies that can only be movies! Make movies that need that final step of the medium to fully realise the vision, because it’s such an expensive, time consuming endeavour that the content had better deserve and earn the medium. If it can be a song, a book, a play, let it be that. But film, film is reserved for the special stories that need the seven arts to make them whole. SO don’t give away our secrets if you don’t have to. 
TM AND HL-Jan 11-photography by Amelia Gregory
Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou, viagra dosage all photography by Amelia Gregory.

Last week Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou held a preview screening for their Tin Tabernacle tour video, viagra sale titled 11 Nights Under Tin. I caught up with them at Bush Hall a few weeks ago to find out more about this talented couple.

Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou, all photography by Amelia GregoryTrevor Moss and Hannah Lou, all photography by Amelia Gregory

The Tin Tabernacle tour followed on from Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou’s Village Hall tour of last year. To pull it off they found approximately fifty churches through the Tin Tabernacles website, got details of about thirty of them and managed to stage concerts in eleven of them. The website often listed the nearest town or they enterprisingly zoomed in on the google street view: sometimes a contact number would be visible on a noticeboard, and at other times they phoned the local pub. Most people were really enthusiastic, but some were overwhelmed by the idea and worried by the commitment. “We wanted to get out into the community and play for people who don’t have much access to music,” they told me when I spoke to them at Bush Hall. “We went to those who were keen.” It seems to have been a successful venture: the audiences were mostly comprised of locals.

Tin Tabernacle by Gilly Rochester
Tin Tabernacle by Gilly Rochester.

The Tin Tabernacle churches all vary in size, though they have a few things in common. They are all made of corrugated iron, and were invented circa 1840, when the scattering of God fearing British citizens across the British Empire hastened the need for an easily transportable place of worship. Mining communities sprung up in all sorts of remote corners of the globe so the churches often had to be carried for long distances overland. “They warm up fast because they are wooden clad inside,” explained Trevor and Hannah, “but some had no electricity so we played by candlelight.” The smallest church held only about 40 people, all squashed into the pews, but the average capacity was between 70-120. What with Trevor, Hannah and their two support acts it was still quite a squish.

Tin Tabernacle by Gilly Rochester
Tin Tabernacle by Gilly Rochester.

I spotted a tin church on my visit to the Cornish village of Cadgwith earlier this year, but sadly this was not one that they managed to include on the tour, despite Trevor’s Cornish heritage. Many were nevertheless located in amazing locations, including on cliff tops.


11 Nights Under Tin, a film by Trevor Moss, can be watched in full above.

Why did they chose such an innovative way of touring? “We had toured the same venues for years and they are all the same, painted black inside.” Trevor and Hannah hope that with their Arts Council funded tours their audiences will experience an event, instead of just standing in the shadows. “It’s no wonder that so many bands’ later records are rubbish when they live in such a strange parallel reality.” So they have chosen places that will open their eyes to other communities. They always stay in independent B&Bs and sometimes with the local vicar – it’s also a carefully considered way for them to have an interesting time whilst peddling an album. “We get to play in places we would never have seen otherwise.”

Tin Tabernacle by Alison Day
Tin Tabernacle by Alison Day.

I can totally relate to this idea – half the reason I was so attracted to fashion photography as a creative medium was the possibility of visiting interesting locations to take photos. During my nascent fashion photography career I went to South Africa and America before I began to realise the environmental problems of excessive air travel.

Trevor Moss and Hannah-Lou by Sarah Matthews
Trevor Moss and Hannah-Lou by Sarah Matthews.

The *world* premiere of the resulting Tin Tabernacle film was shown at The Social on Wednesday 16th March. It was entirely shot on an old 80s Hi 8 camera in three seconds bursts three or four times an hour, so it is basically what they describe as “a collection of moving photos” with mostly in-camera sound.

Trevor Moss & Hannah Lou - Tin Churches by Emmeline Pidgen
Tin Churches by Emmeline Pidgen.

This interactive approach to playing and documenting music is a result of Hannah and Trevor’s art college career. They both met at Goldsmiths, where Trevor was studying fine art and Hannah was doing theatre studies. By the time they reached their third year they were signed as the band Indigo Moss, which we profiled on Amelia’s Magazine. By this point they were spending so much time immersed in music that Trevor had to enlist the rest of the band to help get his degree show up on time.

Tin Tabernacles by Reena Makwana
Tin Tabernacles by Reena Makwana.

The couple have now been writing songs together for 8 years and seem a lot older and wiser than their 25 years of age, a fact which they attribute to having lots of older friends. They met whilst living in halls but did not start going out together until Indigo Moss, and managed to keep their relationship secret from other band members for two months. They got married in 2008.


There’s Something Happening Somewhere, a film by Trevor Moss.

Indigo Moss eventually broke up because they didn’t enjoy it anymore, especially the way the label was pushing the band. Inevitably, they were pulling bigger audiences as a duet. At that point Tom from Lewis Music saw them and they signed a one album deal. After that Jeff of Heavenly saw a couple of shows and as they put it “it all happened quite naturally. We had a cup of tea and the Tin Tabernacle tour really caught his imagination.” Heavenly Recordings have parted ways with megalith EMI and are now part of the Universal funded Cooperative Music initiative which supports independent labels such as Transgressive, Moshi Moshi, Bella Union and Domino. It means they can share PR costs and everyone knows when the others are releasing records so they don’t step on toes, which seems to make brilliant sense. These are amongst my favourite labels and between them they host some fabulous musicians – why would they want to deliberately compete with each other?

Trevor-Moss-Hannah-Lou-by-LJG-Art-Illustration
Trevor Moss and Hannah-Lou by LJG Art & Illustration.

Ever prolific, Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou aim to put out one album a year from now on. The next record will be out in May and then comes the festival season, starting at Wood Festival on 21st May, and moving onto Truck Festival, Port Eliot and of course Glastonbury – where they played on my Climate Camp stage last year alongside Danny and the Champions of the World.


Performing at Wood Festival in 2009.

What to expect from the upcoming record? “There will be drums and a much bigger sound.” But as always all guitar and voices will be recorded together. I can’t imagine there will be much room in their van for more band members, and they agree that it is perfectly sized for just them. Although Trevor jokes that Hannah gets on his nerves it’s clear that this is very much a twosome. What happens when a family enters the equation? “Trevor wants to be a house husband,” laughs Hannah. “It will be a nice quiet time to write!” For now what they really want is a pet whippet. “They are lovely; so skinny and frail,” says Trevor. “It could travel in a hammock in the van.” The main trouble would be taking a dog into festivals, but I’m sure they could find an interesting series of venues that would accept a canine companion. Did someone mention lighthouses?

Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou, all photography by Amelia Gregory

Categories ,11 Nights Under Tin, ,Alison Day, ,Arts Council, ,Bella Union, ,British Empire, ,Bush Hall, ,Cadgwith, ,Climate Camp, ,Cooperative Music, ,Cornish village, ,Cornwall, ,Danny and the Champions of the World, ,Domino Records, ,EMI, ,Emmeline Pidgen, ,Gilly Rochester, ,glastonbury, ,goldsmiths, ,Hannah Lou, ,Heavenly Recordings, ,Heavenly Social, ,Hi 8 camera, ,Indigo Moss, ,Lewis Music, ,LJG Art & Illustration, ,mining, ,Moshi Moshi, ,Port Eliot, ,Port Elliot, ,Reena Makwana, ,Sarah Matthews, ,The Social, ,There’s Something Happening Somewhere, ,Tin Tabernacle, ,Tin Tabernacle Tour, ,Transgressive, ,Trevor Moss, ,Trevor Moss and Hannah-Lou, ,Tripod Stage, ,Truck Festival, ,Universal, ,Village Hall, ,Whippet, ,Wood Festival

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Amelia’s Magazine | A post Tin Tabernacle interview with Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou

Jesca Hoop by Rebecca Strickson
Jesca Hoop by Avril Kelly
Jesca Hoop by Avril Kelly.

I love Jesca Hoop‘s new song City Bird and the accompanying video so much so that I decided to get in touch with both Jesca and Elia Petridis, side effects the director of her recent videos, sildenafil to find out what makes them tick. Elia Petridis runs boutique production company Filmatics in Los Angeles, California. After making several award winning shorts and music videos he is about to start shooting his first full length feature The Man Who Shook The Hand Of Vicente Fernandez. I think his incredibly detailed answers throw an intriguing light on what goes into the creation of a very considered and beautiful music video.

Jesca-Hoop-by-Liam-McMahon
Jesca Hoop by Liam McMahon.

When did you start working with director Elia Petridis?

Jesca: Elia is an old friend. We met in Los Angeles at one of my shows. He would say that he forced me to be his friend, which is kind of true though I would say that he used his clever imagination to lure me in. I’m glad that he did. The Kingdom was our first video adventure together.

Elia: A producer I’m working closely with these days said to me recently that humans are “meaning making machines” (a soundbite from some career seminar) but that phrase really resonated with me. I’m infatuated with screenwriting and personal mythologies, sometimes to the detriment of my own mental health. I grew up in Dubai for 18 years before moving to LA for film school – although Dubai had a lot of its own magic it didn’t have a music scene to speak of so I’m always a little astonished by the talent I find in LA. When I saw Jesca perform live I really felt her music was very special and otherworldly, and tried to do my best to see if, as human planets, we could potentially orbit each other and become friends. 

I would venture to say that the first time I saw Jesca Hoop live was one of the most astonishing musical moments I have ever witnessed. It was the night before Halloween and she came out in a marionette outfit, complete with rosy cheeks, and stood motionless while her back up players wound her up to life. For a visualist like me, a storyteller, it really had an impact. The whole endeavour of courting a friendship with her was kind of a lark for me because I honestly thought she had better things to do. It was just a matter of pushing the boundary between fan and friend and seeing how much I could get away with. Suddenly, unexpectedly, as with most of life’s wonder, we had some mileage behind us and had transformed into friends. I will tell you that the first *official* conversation, the ice breaker, was when she was writing Tulip – from the Hunting my Dress album – and I was writing a screenplay dealing with Tulip Fever in Holland so I leant her my reference material. I knew I had two opportunities to wiggle my way in there – one to give her the book, and one to get it back!   

Hunting my Dress
The Hunting My Dress album cover.

Where was City Bird shot and where did the inspiration come from?

Jesca: It was shot in a miniature haunted house in downtown LA. We both wanted it to be a ghost story and Elia was the one to bring the children’s narrative into it.

Elia: FALSE! The video was shot in a garage in Riverside, Ca. The whole thing was fractal – an infinite amount of information in a finite space, as the garage is attached to an 18th century ‘Painted Lady’ Victorian house owned by my fiance. So in essence, it was shot in a miniature dollhouse inside a bigger dollhouse which made the shoot utterly magic. I think what Jesca is communicating is that the story takes place in a miniature dollhouse in downtown LA. The whole thing was lit using candles and christmas lights. 

Where did the idea for an animated video come from?

Jesca: It came out of limitation really. We had very very little money for this video so we just mused about what we could do with what time and money we did have. I set a pretty hard task considering the resources available and I am delighted with what Elia and his team came through with.

Elia: To me, the track is seance folk. That’s the sonic iconography that City Bird evokes – a ghostly seance. When it comes to music and music videos I am not a literal thinker so although my mind knows the song is about the fright and sadness associated with homelessness that’s not what my heart feels when I hear the song, and it’s not what the dream theatre in my mind projects over it either. But here Jesca’s mastery shines through, because the sonic landscape, right down to the very physical shape her mouth is making around the lyric is just as important as what she’s trying to say; the two are organically woven together. The magic of Jesca’s music lies in the alchemy that exists between form and content. All my artistic heroes do this, from Chabon, to Spielberg; they use genre to sugar coat the pill. So here she uses the disguise of seance music to coat the literal message of homelessness she’s trying to communicate. 

Now, narrative is something I am always running away from when directing a music video. Whenever I read a music video treatment from some kid that went to film school it makes me cringe and I think the best music videos come from documentary filmmakers who get a chance to put forward a psychology of form rather than one of narrative. But, having said that, my instincts on City Bird were narrative, perhaps because it’s a kind of lilting waltz so it felt right to have a narrative to pull you through it.  So, for the treatment, I sat down and wrote an entire ghost story from scratch, in the style of Poe or Hawthorne. I even wrote nursery rhymes about the ghost, because ghost stories are mostly aural traditions.

On The Kingdom video Jesca had a ton of input because I quickly realised that it would only reach its full potential if I pretended to be a paint brush and let her grab hold of the crew through me and paint. Once I took my ego out of the equation I realised there was something special there I was meant to service, and honestly, that’s the best method of working with an artist on a music video, that’s what you really cross your fingers for, isn’t it? You can see a little more of that process on the behind-the-scenes doc of the kingdom here:

But for City Bird Jesca was in Manchester and we were in LA shooting. Her schedule was tight, and I was really flattered that she had enough faith in me to let me just go and shoot because I know how much she loves her songs and how much faith it took for her to let go a little. I had originally submitted an entirely different treatment to her and had kind of resigned myself to the fact I wasn’t going to do it, which was cool enough for me because god only knows how many talented people Jesca comes across in her travels. Surely, I thought, she can find people in the UK to make amazing videos, and surely, as an artist, she wants to go and do cool stuff with other cool people. So I thought I would just give it a shot. I submitted this treatment about metaphorical ghosts, which dealt with mis-en-scene of places that had just been left and abandoned – an unmade bed, plates on a table after dinner, a toilet still running, stuff like that, where humans had vacated the frame only seconds ago and you’d just missed them – kind of pretentious honestly. Then I came across my fiancée’s childhood dollhouse and started taking video and snapping pictures and all of a sudden this whole new idea came to mind of the dollhouse and miniatures and stop motion and ghosts. I sent the examples to Jesca and she totally fell for it! 

City Bird house
City Bird house.

Ghost stories are tricky because they are incredibly emotional stories surrounded in gothic imagery. Ghost stories like The Others, The Orphanage, The Sixth Sense, are rite of passage stories – they’re about letting go. About the dead letting go of the living and the living letting go of the dead. They’re NOT about the living being punished for a sin like horror movies, but about forgiveness of that sin from all parties, the relinquishing of unfinished business. And I wanted to nail that, I really did. In City Bird it is the boy who is at the centre of the story and has the rite of passage: the ghost is a sort of Frankenstein or Edward Scissorhands character. 

The boy has nightmares and makes up ghastly stories that paint the ghost as a demon, then something happens to the boy on his bike and he dies. We get those silent movie inter-titles: his tower (the city) is turned to a tomb. Shadows loom over his white coffin and he becomes a ghost, set into the underworld where he is refused and becomes a refugee with nowhere to go. It’s scary out there for a little boy so he returns to the ghost’s house and we realise that’s her purpose – she is a host for waywardly spirits like the dead boy. But he has been so scared of her, will he change? Can he let go of his fear of her? Can he muster up the courage to enter as she beckons him in? The song ends unresolved sonically so I wanted to leave the audience there just as the music does. The theme is that of judging a book by its cover and misunderstanding something: just as we pass the homeless on the street and pretend they are invisible like ghosts when they all have a real inner life. Can we let go of our prejudices and see beyond the stereotypes to see that the issues that made them homeless are ones that could very well come to prey on and haunt us at any time? That’s kind of the metaphor I was trying to get at. 

City Bird ghost
The City Bird ghost.

Who made the puppets and how long did the video take to make?

Jesca: I’m not quite sure actually… I should ask.

Elia: Everyone who was involved in making the City Bird video knew there was a finite time of ten days in which to create this beautiful, creative thing so necessity was to be the mother of invention due to the time constraints, and everyone really fed on that and brought their best to the project. My fiancee, Maranatha Hay, is an Emmy award winning documentary filmmaker who is piped into the most creative, kind, and daring community of filmmakers and her best friend Natalie Apodaca is an artist with experience in installations. I showed her Metropolis and told her we were going to build a monotone city from cardboard and she just went for it. Cosmin Cosma was my left hand man who insisted we use the Dragon Stop Motion software, which honestly was the main reason we were able to get the shots we needed in the time we had. 

The crew never lost faith in my direction, even when I had no idea how we would do it just ten minutes before the shoot. In the opening shot of the video there is a city cardboard diorama, the dollhouse, the puppet of the ghost AND the moon projected over the city! All those elements came into play because we just broke down the shot we had in mind element by element: that’s real filmmaking in a pure form. 99% of this video was done IN-CAMERA, like The Lumière Brothers! Then it was given that incredible aged look by Dan Geis, our after effects genius.

Jesca Hoop by Emma Lucy Watson
Jesca Hoop by Emma Lucy Watson.

I can tell you how the puppets were made, but I urge you to remember that cinema is like a magic trick. The home made feel is part of the fun of the viewing experience, especially the joy in realising that things like hair are actually twine. The doll’s arms are made of tiny painted tree branches, her spine is metal wire and her dress is made of muslin. Her face is tracing paper and is removable so that we could change her expressions from shot to shot. The part where the fork floats across the table had to be done with tweezers! (nudged lovingly one frame at a time by Maranatha)

The house was a nightmare. It is three feet tall and it took us 3 days to put it together from a flat box. We painted every part, so we had to know what the end product would look like before we even started. Luckily an architect friend, Dannon Rampton, showed up just to check out what was going on and got so enamoured with the dolls house that he ended up putting it together which is just as well since Natalie and I were clueless as to how we were going to do it. We painted it and then we had to DILAPIDATE IT so it looked old and haunted! We scrubbed it with metal brush, we broke its steeple and we stuffed miniature moss in all its crevices so that the ghost story would feel real and lived in. 

My motto is: make movies that can only be movies! Make movies that need that final step of the medium to fully realise the vision, because it’s such an expensive, time consuming endeavour that the content had better deserve and earn the medium. If it can be a song, a book, a play, let it be that. But film, film is reserved for the special stories that need the seven arts to make them whole. SO don’t give away our secrets if you don’t have to. 
Jesca Hoop by Avril Kelly
Jesca Hoop by Avril Kelly.

I love Jesca Hoop‘s new song City Bird and the accompanying video so much so that I decided to get in touch with both Jesca and Elia Petridis, drug the director of her recent videos, hospital to find out what makes them tick. Elia Petridis runs boutique production company Filmatics in Los Angeles, California. After making several award winning shorts and music videos he is about to start shooting his first full length feature The Man Who Shook The Hand Of Vicente Fernandez. I think his incredibly detailed answers throw an intriguing light on what goes into the creation of a very considered and beautiful music video.

Jesca-Hoop-by-Liam-McMahon
Jesca Hoop by Liam McMahon.

When did you start working with director Elia Petridis?

Jesca: Elia is an old friend. We met in Los Angeles at one of my shows. He would say that he forced me to be his friend, which is kind of true though I would say that he used his clever imagination to lure me in. I’m glad that he did. The Kingdom was our first video adventure together.

Elia: A producer I’m working closely with these days said to me recently that humans are “meaning making machines” (a soundbite from some career seminar) but that phrase really resonated with me. I’m infatuated with screenwriting and personal mythologies, sometimes to the detriment of my own mental health. I grew up in Dubai for 18 years before moving to LA for film school – although Dubai had a lot of its own magic it didn’t have a music scene to speak of so I’m always a little astonished by the talent I find in LA. When I saw Jesca perform live I really felt her music was very special and otherworldly, and tried to do my best to see if, as human planets, we could potentially orbit each other and become friends. 

Jesca Hoop by Rebecca Strickson
Jesca Hoop by Rebecca Strickson.

I would venture to say that the first time I saw Jesca Hoop live was one of the most astonishing musical moments I have ever witnessed. It was the night before Halloween and she came out in a marionette outfit, complete with rosy cheeks, and stood motionless while her back up players wound her up to life. For a visualist like me, a storyteller, it really had an impact. The whole endeavour of courting a friendship with her was kind of a lark for me because I honestly thought she had better things to do. It was just a matter of pushing the boundary between fan and friend and seeing how much I could get away with. Suddenly, unexpectedly, as with most of life’s wonder, we had some mileage behind us and had transformed into friends. I will tell you that the first *official* conversation, the ice breaker, was when she was writing Tulip – from the Hunting my Dress album – and I was writing a screenplay dealing with Tulip Fever in Holland so I leant her my reference material. I knew I had two opportunities to wiggle my way in there – one to give her the book, and one to get it back!   

Hunting my Dress
The Hunting My Dress album cover.

Where was City Bird shot and where did the inspiration come from?

Jesca: It was shot in a miniature haunted house in downtown LA. We both wanted it to be a ghost story and Elia was the one to bring the children’s narrative into it.

Elia: FALSE! The video was shot in a garage in Riverside, Ca. The whole thing was fractal – an infinite amount of information in a finite space, as the garage is attached to an 18th century ‘Painted Lady’ Victorian house owned by my fiance. So in essence, it was shot in a miniature dollhouse inside a bigger dollhouse which made the shoot utterly magic. I think what Jesca is communicating is that the story takes place in a miniature dollhouse in downtown LA. The whole thing was lit using candles and christmas lights. 

Where did the idea for an animated video come from?

Jesca: It came out of limitation really. We had very very little money for this video so we just mused about what we could do with what time and money we did have. I set a pretty hard task considering the resources available and I am delighted with what Elia and his team came through with.

Elia: To me, the track is seance folk. That’s the sonic iconography that City Bird evokes – a ghostly seance. When it comes to music and music videos I am not a literal thinker so although my mind knows the song is about the fright and sadness associated with homelessness that’s not what my heart feels when I hear the song, and it’s not what the dream theatre in my mind projects over it either. But here Jesca’s mastery shines through, because the sonic landscape, right down to the very physical shape her mouth is making around the lyric is just as important as what she’s trying to say; the two are organically woven together. The magic of Jesca’s music lies in the alchemy that exists between form and content. All my artistic heroes do this, from Chabon, to Spielberg; they use genre to sugar coat the pill. So here she uses the disguise of seance music to coat the literal message of homelessness she’s trying to communicate. 

Now, narrative is something I am always running away from when directing a music video. Whenever I read a music video treatment from some kid that went to film school it makes me cringe and I think the best music videos come from documentary filmmakers who get a chance to put forward a psychology of form rather than one of narrative. But, having said that, my instincts on City Bird were narrative, perhaps because it’s a kind of lilting waltz so it felt right to have a narrative to pull you through it.  So, for the treatment, I sat down and wrote an entire ghost story from scratch, in the style of Poe or Hawthorne. I even wrote nursery rhymes about the ghost, because ghost stories are mostly aural traditions.

On The Kingdom video Jesca had a ton of input because I quickly realised that it would only reach its full potential if I pretended to be a paint brush and let her grab hold of the crew through me and paint. Once I took my ego out of the equation I realised there was something special there I was meant to service, and honestly, that’s the best method of working with an artist on a music video, that’s what you really cross your fingers for, isn’t it? You can see a little more of that process on the behind-the-scenes doc of the kingdom here:

But for City Bird Jesca was in Manchester and we were in LA shooting. Her schedule was tight, and I was really flattered that she had enough faith in me to let me just go and shoot because I know how much she loves her songs and how much faith it took for her to let go a little. I had originally submitted an entirely different treatment to her and had kind of resigned myself to the fact I wasn’t going to do it, which was cool enough for me because god only knows how many talented people Jesca comes across in her travels. Surely, I thought, she can find people in the UK to make amazing videos, and surely, as an artist, she wants to go and do cool stuff with other cool people. So I thought I would just give it a shot. I submitted this treatment about metaphorical ghosts, which dealt with mis-en-scene of places that had just been left and abandoned – an unmade bed, plates on a table after dinner, a toilet still running, stuff like that, where humans had vacated the frame only seconds ago and you’d just missed them – kind of pretentious honestly. Then I came across my fiancée’s childhood dollhouse and started taking video and snapping pictures and all of a sudden this whole new idea came to mind of the dollhouse and miniatures and stop motion and ghosts. I sent the examples to Jesca and she totally fell for it! 

City Bird house
City Bird house.

Ghost stories are tricky because they are incredibly emotional stories surrounded in gothic imagery. Ghost stories like The Others, The Orphanage, The Sixth Sense, are rite of passage stories – they’re about letting go. About the dead letting go of the living and the living letting go of the dead. They’re NOT about the living being punished for a sin like horror movies, but about forgiveness of that sin from all parties, the relinquishing of unfinished business. And I wanted to nail that, I really did. In City Bird it is the boy who is at the centre of the story and has the rite of passage: the ghost is a sort of Frankenstein or Edward Scissorhands character. 

The boy has nightmares and makes up ghastly stories that paint the ghost as a demon, then something happens to the boy on his bike and he dies. We get those silent movie inter-titles: his tower (the city) is turned to a tomb. Shadows loom over his white coffin and he becomes a ghost, set into the underworld where he is refused and becomes a refugee with nowhere to go. It’s scary out there for a little boy so he returns to the ghost’s house and we realise that’s her purpose – she is a host for waywardly spirits like the dead boy. But he has been so scared of her, will he change? Can he let go of his fear of her? Can he muster up the courage to enter as she beckons him in? The song ends unresolved sonically so I wanted to leave the audience there just as the music does. The theme is that of judging a book by its cover and misunderstanding something: just as we pass the homeless on the street and pretend they are invisible like ghosts when they all have a real inner life. Can we let go of our prejudices and see beyond the stereotypes to see that the issues that made them homeless are ones that could very well come to prey on and haunt us at any time? That’s kind of the metaphor I was trying to get at. 

City Bird ghost
The City Bird ghost.

Who made the puppets and how long did the video take to make?

Jesca: I’m not quite sure actually… I should ask.

Elia: Everyone who was involved in making the City Bird video knew there was a finite time of ten days in which to create this beautiful, creative thing so necessity was to be the mother of invention due to the time constraints, and everyone really fed on that and brought their best to the project. My fiancee, Maranatha Hay, is an Emmy award winning documentary filmmaker who is piped into the most creative, kind, and daring community of filmmakers and her best friend Natalie Apodaca is an artist with experience in installations. I showed her Metropolis and told her we were going to build a monotone city from cardboard and she just went for it. Cosmin Cosma was my left hand man who insisted we use the Dragon Stop Motion software, which honestly was the main reason we were able to get the shots we needed in the time we had. 

The crew never lost faith in my direction, even when I had no idea how we would do it just ten minutes before the shoot. In the opening shot of the video there is a city cardboard diorama, the dollhouse, the puppet of the ghost AND the moon projected over the city! All those elements came into play because we just broke down the shot we had in mind element by element: that’s real filmmaking in a pure form. 99% of this video was done IN-CAMERA, like The Lumière Brothers! Then it was given that incredible aged look by Dan Geis, our after effects genius.

Jesca Hoop by Emma Lucy Watson
Jesca Hoop by Emma Lucy Watson.

I can tell you how the puppets were made, but I urge you to remember that cinema is like a magic trick. The home made feel is part of the fun of the viewing experience, especially the joy in realising that things like hair are actually twine. The doll’s arms are made of tiny painted tree branches, her spine is metal wire and her dress is made of muslin. Her face is tracing paper and is removable so that we could change her expressions from shot to shot. The part where the fork floats across the table had to be done with tweezers! (nudged lovingly one frame at a time by Maranatha)

The house was a nightmare. It is three feet tall and it took us 3 days to put it together from a flat box. We painted every part, so we had to know what the end product would look like before we even started. Luckily an architect friend, Dannon Rampton, showed up just to check out what was going on and got so enamoured with the dolls house that he ended up putting it together which is just as well since Natalie and I were clueless as to how we were going to do it. We painted it and then we had to DILAPIDATE IT so it looked old and haunted! We scrubbed it with metal brush, we broke its steeple and we stuffed miniature moss in all its crevices so that the ghost story would feel real and lived in. 

My motto is: make movies that can only be movies! Make movies that need that final step of the medium to fully realise the vision, because it’s such an expensive, time consuming endeavour that the content had better deserve and earn the medium. If it can be a song, a book, a play, let it be that. But film, film is reserved for the special stories that need the seven arts to make them whole. SO don’t give away our secrets if you don’t have to. 
TM AND HL-Jan 11-photography by Amelia Gregory
Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou, viagra dosage all photography by Amelia Gregory.

Last week Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou held a preview screening for their Tin Tabernacle tour video, viagra sale titled 11 Nights Under Tin. I caught up with them at Bush Hall a few weeks ago to find out more about this talented couple.

Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou, all photography by Amelia GregoryTrevor Moss and Hannah Lou, all photography by Amelia Gregory

The Tin Tabernacle tour followed on from Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou’s Village Hall tour of last year. To pull it off they found approximately fifty churches through the Tin Tabernacles website, got details of about thirty of them and managed to stage concerts in eleven of them. The website often listed the nearest town or they enterprisingly zoomed in on the google street view: sometimes a contact number would be visible on a noticeboard, and at other times they phoned the local pub. Most people were really enthusiastic, but some were overwhelmed by the idea and worried by the commitment. “We wanted to get out into the community and play for people who don’t have much access to music,” they told me when I spoke to them at Bush Hall. “We went to those who were keen.” It seems to have been a successful venture: the audiences were mostly comprised of locals.

Tin Tabernacle by Gilly Rochester
Tin Tabernacle by Gilly Rochester.

The Tin Tabernacle churches all vary in size, though they have a few things in common. They are all made of corrugated iron, and were invented circa 1840, when the scattering of God fearing British citizens across the British Empire hastened the need for an easily transportable place of worship. Mining communities sprung up in all sorts of remote corners of the globe so the churches often had to be carried for long distances overland. “They warm up fast because they are wooden clad inside,” explained Trevor and Hannah, “but some had no electricity so we played by candlelight.” The smallest church held only about 40 people, all squashed into the pews, but the average capacity was between 70-120. What with Trevor, Hannah and their two support acts it was still quite a squish.

Tin Tabernacle by Gilly Rochester
Tin Tabernacle by Gilly Rochester.

I spotted a tin church on my visit to the Cornish village of Cadgwith earlier this year, but sadly this was not one that they managed to include on the tour, despite Trevor’s Cornish heritage. Many were nevertheless located in amazing locations, including on cliff tops.


11 Nights Under Tin, a film by Trevor Moss, can be watched in full above.

Why did they chose such an innovative way of touring? “We had toured the same venues for years and they are all the same, painted black inside.” Trevor and Hannah hope that with their Arts Council funded tours their audiences will experience an event, instead of just standing in the shadows. “It’s no wonder that so many bands’ later records are rubbish when they live in such a strange parallel reality.” So they have chosen places that will open their eyes to other communities. They always stay in independent B&Bs and sometimes with the local vicar – it’s also a carefully considered way for them to have an interesting time whilst peddling an album. “We get to play in places we would never have seen otherwise.”

Tin Tabernacle by Alison Day
Tin Tabernacle by Alison Day.

I can totally relate to this idea – half the reason I was so attracted to fashion photography as a creative medium was the possibility of visiting interesting locations to take photos. During my nascent fashion photography career I went to South Africa and America before I began to realise the environmental problems of excessive air travel.

Trevor Moss and Hannah-Lou by Sarah Matthews
Trevor Moss and Hannah-Lou by Sarah Matthews.

The *world* premiere of the resulting Tin Tabernacle film was shown at The Social on Wednesday 16th March. It was entirely shot on an old 80s Hi 8 camera in three seconds bursts three or four times an hour, so it is basically what they describe as “a collection of moving photos” with mostly in-camera sound.

Trevor Moss & Hannah Lou - Tin Churches by Emmeline Pidgen
Tin Churches by Emmeline Pidgen.

This interactive approach to playing and documenting music is a result of Hannah and Trevor’s art college career. They both met at Goldsmiths, where Trevor was studying fine art and Hannah was doing theatre studies. By the time they reached their third year they were signed as the band Indigo Moss, which we profiled on Amelia’s Magazine. By this point they were spending so much time immersed in music that Trevor had to enlist the rest of the band to help get his degree show up on time.

Tin Tabernacles by Reena Makwana
Tin Tabernacles by Reena Makwana.

The couple have now been writing songs together for 8 years and seem a lot older and wiser than their 25 years of age, a fact which they attribute to having lots of older friends. They met whilst living in halls but did not start going out together until Indigo Moss, and managed to keep their relationship secret from other band members for two months. They got married in 2008.


There’s Something Happening Somewhere, a film by Trevor Moss.

Indigo Moss eventually broke up because they didn’t enjoy it anymore, especially the way the label was pushing the band. Inevitably, they were pulling bigger audiences as a duet. At that point Tom from Lewis Music saw them and they signed a one album deal. After that Jeff of Heavenly saw a couple of shows and as they put it “it all happened quite naturally. We had a cup of tea and the Tin Tabernacle tour really caught his imagination.” Heavenly Recordings have parted ways with megalith EMI and are now part of the Universal funded Cooperative Music initiative which supports independent labels such as Transgressive, Moshi Moshi, Bella Union and Domino. It means they can share PR costs and everyone knows when the others are releasing records so they don’t step on toes, which seems to make brilliant sense. These are amongst my favourite labels and between them they host some fabulous musicians – why would they want to deliberately compete with each other?

Trevor-Moss-Hannah-Lou-by-LJG-Art-Illustration
Trevor Moss and Hannah-Lou by LJG Art & Illustration.

Ever prolific, Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou aim to put out one album a year from now on. The next record will be out in May and then comes the festival season, starting at Wood Festival on 21st May, and moving onto Truck Festival, Port Eliot and of course Glastonbury – where they played on my Climate Camp stage last year alongside Danny and the Champions of the World.


Performing at Wood Festival in 2009.

What to expect from the upcoming record? “There will be drums and a much bigger sound.” But as always all guitar and voices will be recorded together. I can’t imagine there will be much room in their van for more band members, and they agree that it is perfectly sized for just them. Although Trevor jokes that Hannah gets on his nerves it’s clear that this is very much a twosome. What happens when a family enters the equation? “Trevor wants to be a house husband,” laughs Hannah. “It will be a nice quiet time to write!” For now what they really want is a pet whippet. “They are lovely; so skinny and frail,” says Trevor. “It could travel in a hammock in the van.” The main trouble would be taking a dog into festivals, but I’m sure they could find an interesting series of venues that would accept a canine companion. Did someone mention lighthouses?

Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou, all photography by Amelia Gregory

Categories ,11 Nights Under Tin, ,Alison Day, ,Arts Council, ,Bella Union, ,British Empire, ,Bush Hall, ,Cadgwith, ,Climate Camp, ,Cooperative Music, ,Cornish village, ,Cornwall, ,Danny and the Champions of the World, ,Domino Records, ,EMI, ,Emmeline Pidgen, ,Gilly Rochester, ,glastonbury, ,goldsmiths, ,Hannah Lou, ,Heavenly Recordings, ,Heavenly Social, ,Hi 8 camera, ,Indigo Moss, ,Lewis Music, ,LJG Art & Illustration, ,mining, ,Moshi Moshi, ,Port Eliot, ,Port Elliot, ,Reena Makwana, ,Sarah Matthews, ,The Social, ,There’s Something Happening Somewhere, ,Tin Tabernacle, ,Tin Tabernacle Tour, ,Transgressive, ,Trevor Moss, ,Trevor Moss and Hannah-Lou, ,Tripod Stage, ,Truck Festival, ,Universal, ,Village Hall, ,Whippet, ,Wood Festival

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Amelia’s Magazine | Saint Saviour: an interview with Becky Jones

saintsaviour genie espinosa
Saint Saviour by Genie Espinosa.

Fresh from touring with Groove Armada, sale with whom she collaborated on the album Black Light, treat Saint Saviour played her debut solo show at Bush Hall, in deepest Shepherds Bush. It must have been a bit bewildering, a week since playing at Brixton Academy after a run of shows that earned her rave reviews and numerous admirers (including the Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant) to be appearing in a renovated dance hall on the Uxbridge Road, but the intimate setting was perfect to showcase her new material.

Saint saviour
Photo courtesy of Saint Saviour.

Saint Saviour is no stranger to the pages of Amelia’s Magazine, having been reviewed a couple of times (including once by yours truly) with her old band, the ever-spangly RGBs (who were once described by the NME, no less, as delivering “almighty fem-pop… with an eccentric blitzkrieg wallop”). I’d seen them a few times around town, and I’d also caught her debut with Groove Armada at the climax of last year’s Lovebox festival. It’s actually one of those rare times, if you endlessly follow bands around gigs, where someone you’ve seen play often is plucked from little venues in Kilburn, Brixton or Shoreditch to tour the world.

Taking to the stage with what looked like a giant jellyfish umbrella (“make of that what you will” quipped Saint Saviour, aka Becky Jones), the set started off hypnotically – anyone expecting a set of pumping dance anthems was in for a bit of a shock. In fact, Saint Saviour’s set proved what a versatile performer she is, mixing up her styles and tempos – whether accompanying herself on keyboards on songs like the delicate Fallen Trees and Hurricanes, or upping a gear (backed with a full band and, for a couple of numbers, a string section) with tracks like Birdsong and the kick-ass current single, Woman Scorned: watch the video here:

YouTube Preview Image

The stage presence that I’d seen in places like the Windmill or the Old Blue Last, and witnessed by anyone who saw her on tour with Groove Armada, was there in spades tonight, whether entrancing a hushed crowd on the slower numbers with her voice (which has been compared to people like Kate Bush, and I think has a touch of Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins about it) or totally throwing herself into the up-tempo songs.

Saint Saviour by Karolina Burdon
Saint Saviour by Karolina Burdon.

To thunderous cheers from the crowd, Saint Saviour was tempted back out for an encore of the touching When You Smile, backed solely by harpist Jharda, before leaving once more to the rapturous applause of an appreciative audience. As a debut show, stepping out of the shadow of Groove Armada, it was great success for Saint Saviour and justifies the praise that she’d already received. It was also a bit of a strange moment for me, having seen her back in the day with her old band, and here she is (deservedly so) on the verge of playing bigger stages as a star in her own right.

Catch my interview with Saint Saviour, coming soon.
saintsaviour genie espinosa
Saint Saviour by Genie Espinosa.

Fresh from touring with Groove Armada, cheapest with whom she collaborated on the album Black Light, illness Saint Saviour played her debut solo show at Bush Hall, in deepest Shepherds Bush. It must have been a bit bewildering, a week since playing at Brixton Academy after a run of shows that earned her rave reviews and numerous admirers (including the Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant) to be appearing in a renovated dance hall on the Uxbridge Road, but the intimate setting was perfect to showcase her new material.


Photo courtesy of Saint Saviour.

Saint Saviour is no stranger to the pages of Amelia’s Magazine, having been reviewed a couple of times (including once by yours truly) with her old band, the ever-spangly RGBs (who were once described by the NME, no less, as delivering “almighty fem-pop… with an eccentric blitzkrieg wallop”). I’d seen them a few times around town, and I’d also caught her debut with Groove Armada at the climax of last year’s Lovebox festival. It’s actually one of those rare times, if you endlessly follow bands around gigs, where someone you’ve seen play often is plucked from little venues in Kilburn, Brixton or Shoreditch to tour the world.

Taking to the stage with what looked like a giant jellyfish umbrella (“make of that what you will” quipped Saint Saviour, aka Becky Jones), the set started off hypnotically – anyone expecting a set of pumping dance anthems was in for a bit of a shock. In fact, Saint Saviour’s set proved what a versatile performer she is, mixing up her styles and tempos – whether accompanying herself on keyboards on songs like the delicate Fallen Trees and Hurricanes, or upping a gear (backed with a full band and, for a couple of numbers, a string section) with tracks like Birdsong and the kick-ass current single, Woman Scorned: watch the video here:

YouTube Preview Image

The stage presence that I’d seen in places like the Windmill or the Old Blue Last, and witnessed by anyone who saw her on tour with Groove Armada, was there in spades tonight, whether entrancing a hushed crowd on the slower numbers with her voice (which has been compared to people like Kate Bush, and I think has a touch of Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins about it) or totally throwing herself into the up-tempo songs.

Saint Saviour by Karolina Burdon
Saint Saviour by Karolina Burdon.

To thunderous cheers from the crowd, Saint Saviour was tempted back out for an encore of the touching When You Smile, backed solely by harpist Jharda, before leaving once more to the rapturous applause of an appreciative audience. As a debut show, stepping out of the shadow of Groove Armada, it was great success for Saint Saviour and justifies the praise that she’d already received. It was also a bit of a strange moment for me, having seen her back in the day with her old band, and here she is (deservedly so) on the verge of playing bigger stages as a star in her own right.

Catch my interview with Saint Saviour, coming soon.
saintsaviour genie espinosa
Saint Saviour by Genie Espinosa.

Fresh from touring with Groove Armada, viagra 100mg with whom she collaborated on the album Black Light, viagra Saint Saviour played her debut solo show at Bush Hall, in deepest Shepherds Bush. It must have been a bit bewildering, a week since playing at Brixton Academy after a run of shows that earned her rave reviews and numerous admirers (including the Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant) to be appearing in a renovated dance hall on the Uxbridge Road, but the intimate setting was perfect to showcase her new material.


Photo courtesy of Saint Saviour.

Saint Saviour is no stranger to the pages of Amelia’s Magazine, having been reviewed a couple of times (including once by yours truly) with her old band, the ever-spangly RGBs (who were once described by the NME, no less, as delivering “almighty fem-pop… with an eccentric blitzkrieg wallop”). I’d seen them a few times around town, and I’d also caught her debut with Groove Armada at the climax of last year’s Lovebox festival. It’s actually one of those rare times, if you endlessly follow bands around gigs, where someone you’ve seen play often is plucked from little venues in Kilburn, Brixton or Shoreditch to tour the world.

Taking to the stage with what looked like a giant jellyfish umbrella (“make of that what you will” quipped Saint Saviour, aka Becky Jones), the set started off hypnotically – anyone expecting a set of pumping dance anthems was in for a bit of a shock. In fact, Saint Saviour’s set proved what a versatile performer she is, mixing up her styles and tempos – whether accompanying herself on keyboards on songs like the delicate Fallen Trees and Hurricanes, or upping a gear (backed with a full band and, for a couple of numbers, a string section) with tracks like Birdsong and the kick-ass current single, Woman Scorned: watch the video here:

YouTube Preview Image

The stage presence that I’d seen in places like the Windmill or the Old Blue Last, and witnessed by anyone who saw her on tour with Groove Armada, was there in spades tonight, whether entrancing a hushed crowd on the slower numbers with her voice (which has been compared to people like Kate Bush, and I think has a touch of Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins about it) or totally throwing herself into the up-tempo songs.

Saint Saviour by Karolina Burdon
Saint Saviour by Karolina Burdon.

To thunderous cheers from the crowd, Saint Saviour was tempted back out for an encore of the touching When You Smile, backed solely by harpist Jharda, before leaving once more to the rapturous applause of an appreciative audience. As a debut show, stepping out of the shadow of Groove Armada, it was great success for Saint Saviour and justifies the praise that she’d already received. It was also a bit of a strange moment for me, having seen her back in the day with her old band, and here she is (deservedly so) on the verge of playing bigger stages as a star in her own right.

Catch my interview with Saint Saviour, coming soon.
saint saviour-stephanie thieullent
Saint Saviour by Stephanie Thieullent.

Shortly after her debut solo show at Bush Hall (read my review here) I caught up with Saint Saviour to pose a few questions…

How did it feel to play your first solo show? You seemed pretty overwhelmed by it!
God, discount did I look really nervous!? I was very nervous indeed. I have toured the world and played to thousands of people, view but singing your own stuff in an intimate setting is very nerve-wracking and I had also just got off tour with Groove Armada so I was and still am pretty exhausted. But it all went reasonably to plan and I got a lot of great feedback from real fans, search which meant the world to me.

saint saviour by daria hlazatova
Saint Saviour by Daria Hlazatova.

After working with Groove Armada, both in the studio and on tour, how has the experience influenced you? Have they given you any good tips?
They taught me a lot about production, and how to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to arranging a tune. I also learned a lot about live show production and how much work goes into it. I got the chance to tour a lot of the world and see how the industry works in other countries and how different people react to the music. I feel a lot worldlier! The best tip they gave me was that the less sleep you get, the less you need.

Saint Saviour by Karina Yarv
Saint Saviour by Karina Yarv.

Songs such as Fallen Trees and Woman Scorned show a few different styles. Who, or what, would you say influences your music?
I have been seriously into music since I was a kid, so I have really diverse tastes and an inquisitive drive to discover more ways of making music. To be honest though, I find this actually quite restricting because when it comes to making my own album, I’ve gone from dark electro to Southern Soul music, Stax Records style, reggae to country folk. It’s a nightmare for A&R situations but I guess it means I can write for other people too and maybe one day, actually make a living.

You’ve got quite distinctive vocals, which I’ve seen compared to the likes of Antony Hegarty. Does it take a lot of practice to get that effect?
Yeah, I practice a lot.

SaintSaviour by Jessica Gurr
SaintSaviour by Jessica Gurr.

You seem to pick up some rather striking outfits for your stage shows and videos. Where do you get the inspiration from, or do you just leave your designers to it?
It may sound a little but ‘special’ but when I listen to music I have very vivid pictures in my mind the whole time and I get a lot of ideas for costumes from this practice. The Jellyfish thing I wore for my first gig was inspired directly by listening to the song I came out to, which just makes me think of them swimming around. I got my friend Paula Selby Avellaneda to make it for me from my imagination, and she made the dress to go with it.

What’s coming up next for Saint Saviour?
Hmmmm. Well there’s a lot of possibly exciting things rumbling beneath me, but I can’t really confirm any of them. I’m doing some exciting collaborations and hoping a couple of nice gigs come off. Watch this space!

Categories ,Antony Hegarty, ,Becky Jones, ,Bush Hall, ,country folk, ,Daria H, ,Daria Hlazatova, ,electro, ,Groove Armada, ,interview, ,Jess Gurr, ,Jessica Gurr, ,Karina Yarv, ,Paula Selby Avellaneda, ,reggae, ,Saint Saviour, ,SaintSaviour, ,Southern Soul, ,Stéphanie Thieullent

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Amelia’s Magazine | Saint Saviour at Bush Hall: Live Review

saintsaviour genie espinosa
saintsaviour genie espinosa
Saint Saviour by Genie Espinosa.

Fresh from touring with Groove Armada, treat with whom she collaborated on the album Black Light, viagra order Saint Saviour played her debut solo show at Bush Hall, in deepest Shepherds Bush. It must have been a bit bewildering, a week since playing at Brixton Academy after a run of shows that earned her rave reviews and numerous admirers (including the Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant) to be appearing in a renovated dance hall on the Uxbridge Road, but the intimate setting was perfect to showcase her new material.


Photo courtesy of Saint Saviour.

Saint Saviour is no stranger to the pages of Amelia’s Magazine, having been reviewed a couple of times (including once by yours truly) with her old band, the ever-spangly RGBs (who were once described by the NME, no less, as delivering “almighty fem-pop… with an eccentric blitzkrieg wallop”). I’d seen them a few times around town, and I’d also caught her debut with Groove Armada at the climax of last year’s Lovebox festival. It’s actually one of those rare times, if you endlessly follow bands around gigs, where someone you’ve seen play often is plucked from little venues in Kilburn, Brixton or Shoreditch to tour the world.

Taking to the stage with what looked like a giant jellyfish umbrella (“make of that what you will” quipped Saint Saviour, aka Becky Jones), the set started off hypnotically – anyone expecting a set of pumping dance anthems was in for a bit of a shock. In fact, Saint Saviour’s set proved what a versatile performer she is, mixing up her styles and tempos – whether accompanying herself on keyboards on songs like the delicate Fallen Trees and Hurricanes, or upping a gear (backed with a full band and, for a couple of numbers, a string section) with tracks like Birdsong and the kick-ass current single, Woman Scorned: watch the video here:

YouTube Preview Image

The stage presence that I’d seen in places like the Windmill or the Old Blue Last, and witnessed by anyone who saw her on tour with Groove Armada, was there in spades tonight, whether entrancing a hushed crowd on the slower numbers with her voice (which has been compared to people like Kate Bush, and I think has a touch of Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins about it) or totally throwing herself into the up-tempo songs.

Saint Saviour by Karolina Burdon
Saint Saviour by Karolina Burdon.

To thunderous cheers from the crowd, Saint Saviour was tempted back out for an encore of the touching When You Smile, backed solely by harpist Jharda, before leaving once more to the rapturous applause of an appreciative audience. As a debut show, stepping out of the shadow of Groove Armada, it was great success for Saint Saviour and justifies the praise that she’d already received. It was also a bit of a strange moment for me, having seen her back in the day with her old band, and here she is (deservedly so) on the verge of playing bigger stages as a star in her own right.

Catch my post-gig interview with Saint Saviour here.

Categories ,Brixton Academy, ,Bush Hall, ,Cocteau Twins, ,Elizabeth Fraser, ,Genie Espinosa, ,Groove Armada, ,Jharda, ,Karolina Burdon, ,Kate Bush, ,Lovebox, ,Neil Tennant, ,NME, ,Old Blue Last, ,pet shop boys, ,RGBs, ,Saint Saviour, ,SaintSaviour, ,Windmill, ,Woman Scorned

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Amelia’s Magazine | Fionn Regan: brand new 100 Acres of Sycamore video and instore gigs

FIONN REGAN BY RICH GILLIGAN
Fionn Regan is a folk musician with the history that befits his heartfelt words. The son of musicians, buy information pills he grew up in the Ireland that we all hear of but never quite imagine exists: a rural idyll where a child could wander free and return home to the sounds of home made merriment. He left school young and took up a series of itinerant jobs whilst travelling around Ireland and the UK, order self educating himself in libraries. With the release of first album The End of History in 2006 he gained critical acclaim and a nomination for the Mercury Music Prize. His second album, The Shadow of An Empire, took a more experimental electro influenced turn, but for 100 Acres of Sycamore (released in August), he has returned to his roots.

100_ACRES_OF_SYCAMORE_PACKSHOT
100 Acres of Sycamore was written in Mallorca, where he stayed at the home of Anna Friel – invited after having met her by chance in Valencia. He was enchanted by the ancient setting and on his return recorded the entire album in seven days. It’s a deeply rich experience, made special by his use of language. Not for nothing is Fionn Regan an honorary member of the Trinity College Literary Society.


The video for 100 Acres of Sycamore was shot by music photographer Sebastien Dehesdin on Hampstead Heath.

Fionn Regan plays a couple of inshore dates this week, including one at Rough Trade West this Sunday 18th September, then at the Lomography Gallery Store on Commercial Street. He headlines Bush Hall on the 20th September. 100 Acres of Sycamore is out now on Heavenly Recordings.

Fionn Regan by Autumn de Wilde HWCH

Categories ,100 Acres of Sycamore, ,album, ,Anna Friel, ,Bush Hall, ,electro, ,Fionn Regan, ,folk, ,Hampstead Heath, ,Heavenly Recordings, ,ireland, ,Lomography Gallery Store, ,Mallorca, ,Mercury music prize, ,Rough Trade West, ,Sebastien Dehesdin, ,The End of History, ,The Shadow of An Empire, ,Trinity College Literary Society, ,video

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Amelia’s Magazine | Fionn Regan: brand new 100 Acres of Sycamore video and instore gigs

FIONN REGAN BY RICH GILLIGAN
Fionn Regan is a folk musician with the history that befits his heartfelt words. The son of musicians, buy information pills he grew up in the Ireland that we all hear of but never quite imagine exists: a rural idyll where a child could wander free and return home to the sounds of home made merriment. He left school young and took up a series of itinerant jobs whilst travelling around Ireland and the UK, order self educating himself in libraries. With the release of first album The End of History in 2006 he gained critical acclaim and a nomination for the Mercury Music Prize. His second album, The Shadow of An Empire, took a more experimental electro influenced turn, but for 100 Acres of Sycamore (released in August), he has returned to his roots.

100_ACRES_OF_SYCAMORE_PACKSHOT
100 Acres of Sycamore was written in Mallorca, where he stayed at the home of Anna Friel – invited after having met her by chance in Valencia. He was enchanted by the ancient setting and on his return recorded the entire album in seven days. It’s a deeply rich experience, made special by his use of language. Not for nothing is Fionn Regan an honorary member of the Trinity College Literary Society.


The video for 100 Acres of Sycamore was shot by music photographer Sebastien Dehesdin on Hampstead Heath.

Fionn Regan plays a couple of inshore dates this week, including one at Rough Trade West this Sunday 18th September, then at the Lomography Gallery Store on Commercial Street. He headlines Bush Hall on the 20th September. 100 Acres of Sycamore is out now on Heavenly Recordings.

Fionn Regan by Autumn de Wilde HWCH

Categories ,100 Acres of Sycamore, ,album, ,Anna Friel, ,Bush Hall, ,electro, ,Fionn Regan, ,folk, ,Hampstead Heath, ,Heavenly Recordings, ,ireland, ,Lomography Gallery Store, ,Mallorca, ,Mercury music prize, ,Rough Trade West, ,Sebastien Dehesdin, ,The End of History, ,The Shadow of An Empire, ,Trinity College Literary Society, ,video

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Amelia’s Magazine | First Aid Kit: a taster of the new album with single The Lion’s Roar

first-aid-kit-the-lions-roar
I’m a massive fan of the incredibly young Swedish twosome known as First Aid Kit, tadalafil and none more so than when I discovered that their father (and mentor) was once in a band with my mum’s Swedish cousin. Tis a small world, aye.

FirstAidKit_NeilKrug
Listen to The Lion’s Roar here.

First Aid Kit have been wowing audiences in America as support for Lykke Li and now they’re back with a new single from their second album, both called The Lion’s Roar. At a performance in Stockholm they even dumbfounded the legendary Patti Smith (watch the video here)

YouTube Preview ImageGhost Town

On December 6th they will be wowing audiences with a full showcase of the new record at Bush Hall. The Lion’s Roar was recorded in Omaha with production by Mike Moggis of Bright Eyes fame, and their dad doing duty on the bass. If the single is anything to go by the new album will be every bit as superb as their first.

YouTube Preview ImageBright Eyes & First Aid Kit – We’re Going to Be Friends (The White Stripes Cover)

For more information visit the First Aid Kit website or read our review of their first album The Big Black and Blue and my review of their Union Chapel gig last year.

The Lion’s Roar (single) is out in December on Wichita Recordings.

Categories ,Bright Eyes, ,Bush Hall, ,First Aid Kit, ,Lykke Li, ,Mike Moggis, ,Omaha, ,patti smith, ,single, ,Swedish, ,The Big Black and Blue, ,The Lion’s Roar, ,union chapel, ,Wichita Recordings

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Amelia’s Magazine | An interview with Julie Ann Baenziger of Sea of Bees

Sea Of Bees by Calico Charlotte Melton
Sea Of Bees by Calico Charlotte Melton.

Sea of Bees released her new single Gnomes on Heavenly Recordings yesterday. It’s yet another heart rending slice of Julie Ann Baenziger, treatment so it seems high time that I finally publish the interview I did with her earlier this year, unhealthy just prior to a gig at Bush Hall in Shepherd’s Bush.

Sea of Bees-Jan 11- photo by Amelia Gregory
Sea of Bees in February 2011. All photography by Amelia Gregory.

jenny robins - amelias magazine - sea of bees
Sea of Bees by Jenny Robins.

Watching Jules live it is hard to believe that she was once a shy church going suburban girl. Since signing to Heavenly Recordings for three albums last year she has become submerged in the intensity of touring, experiencing a very different world to the one she left behind.

Sea of Bees-Jan 11- photo by Amelia Gregory
YouTube Preview ImageGnomes

Jules was born in Roseville, a suburb of Sacramento. ‘A place where you go to school, have crushes, go to college, go to church and very little else.’ She was brought up a Catholic but from an early age knew she was different. As a shy and awkward 6 year old, she remembers becoming enchanted by ‘this hippy man with curly hair and glasses singing with a wobbly vibrato‘. She instantly knew she wanted to sing but wasn’t sure how to go about it.

Sea of bees by Lee
Sea of Bees by Lee.

Her mum loved Cher, Celine Dion and the Bee Gees (in their bad stage, Jules hastens to add). Her dad thought The Mamas and The Papas were bad because they all slept with each other, and he would say things to scare Jules away from popular music. At church they listened to U2 and Christian music. Apparently U2 made it their goal to reach religious congregations. ‘I don’t mind them,’ she says ‘but I don’t like them in church.’

Sea of Bees-Jan 11- photo by Amelia Gregory
jenny robins - amelias magazine - sea of bees
Sea of Bees by Jenny Robins.

Never aspiring to do anything more than play in small bands, Jules taught herself to play an out of tune one string bass that she found in the shed when she was 16. She had lots of long hair, and looked like a real girly girl – but she liked girls. ‘There was nothing to do but go to church and school, and I was in love with a girl at my church who had the voice of an angel,‘ says Jules, ‘so I learnt a song that she always sang note by note.’ She had just one goal: to find the right person for love. When the object of her affections told her ‘that’s great Jules‘ it lit a fire beneath her which inspired her to practice hard every day, yet still she felt frustrated because her feelings were not returned. ‘I felt I couldn’t love anybody or play good music.’

Sea of Bees-Jan 11- photo by Amelia Gregory
Julie from Sea of Bees by Lilly Allen
Julie from Sea of Bees by Lilly Allen.

Her mother was supportive yet still she remained depressed, haunted by a nagging feeing that she would die young, wanting but unable to have the things just out of her reach. Folks at church told her ‘don’t let your gift overthrow your heart‘ – meaning that she shouldn’t obsess all the time. But everyone in Christian bands seemed to break up and have kids, so eventually Jules left Roseville and the church at 23 years old to live with a 19 year old guy, a producer, that she had met online. They lived in a ramshackle old house in Sacramento where they hosted lots of parties which trashed the place. ‘Every night we played music and some mornings there would be 25-30 people sleeping on the floor… lots of mad hipster kids. I would just get drunk to stay numb.’ They lived together for two years, Jules playing bass for their punk band, Find Me Fighting Them, and working as a coffee barrister in the daytime. It was in the coffee shop that she met her Orange Farben. ‘She had a bowl haircut, green eyes, vintage shorts and a ruffled shirt – and I knew it was right. She was like ‘Do you like boys?’ and I was like ‘Phew, that’s a bold question!’ She freed me, she was the thing that I needed.

Sea-of-Bees-by-Sarah-Matthews
Sea of Bees by Sarah Matthews.

A year and a half ago she met John Baccigaluppi of Hangar Studios, who encouraged her to use his studio to record some acoustic songs. Straight away he was keen to remix her songs and the first short EP was born. Since then she has been busy gigging all over the US and Europe. ‘I just try to keep moving and enjoy the moment. I know I can rest when I’ve had a good day.’ She credits John with teaching her ‘what’s good in life‘ and aspires to lead a similar lifestyle to Martin Kelly of Heavenly, who is married to Sarah Cracknell of Saint Etienne. ‘His quality of life inspires me.’ Jules dreams of setting up her own studio at home, where she will nurture a calm environment far from the partying demands of being on tour. ‘I like to eat carrots and nuts and salads. Stay put at home and enjoy my friends.’

Sea of Bees-Jan 11- photo by Amelia Gregory
Sea of Bees by Lilly Allen
Sea of Bees by Lilly Allen.

Jules has songs already recorded for the next album, some of which she wrote whilst on tour with the Smoke Fairies. When I met her she was fairly certain that the next album will be called Orange Farben, after the love that meant so much to her. ‘I want to be a good person and care,’ said Jules, as she prepared to go on stage. ‘Keep doing what you love and good things will come – that’s what I keep telling myself. Of course there’s loneliness but I have to let it go.’

Sea of Bees-Jan 11- photo by Amelia Gregory
Sea-of-Bees-by-Jane-McGuinn
Sea of Bees by Jane McGuinn.

Why the reference to sadness? Her last song at Bush Hall was dedicated to her Orange Farben – a statement which was lost on the majority of the audience, as was much of her slightly garbled interludes, but I had just hugged her backstage as she spilled over into tears, and I knew that her girlfriend of one year had split up with Jules over Skype the evening before. ‘I just want to love somebody and take care of them,’ she had reiterated to me. ‘That’s my goal, that and make music. Right now I have heartbreak but everything is going to be okay.’ Sea of Bees‘ unique talent lies in her ability to share emotion on a visceral level, the melancholy of her music slipping deep inside when you least expect it. Orange Farben may have broken her heart but I have no doubt that the album dedicated to her name will be a therapeutic experience not only for Jules, but also for her ever growing sea of admirers.

Gnomes Tunng remix, free download for a short period only.

Categories ,Bee Gees, ,Being of Unsound Mind, ,Bush Hall, ,Calico Charlotte Melton, ,Catholic, ,Celine Dion, ,Cher, ,Christian, ,Find Me Fighting Them, ,Gnomes, ,Hangar Studios, ,Heavenly Recordings, ,Jane McGuinn, ,Jenny Robins, ,John Baccigaluppi, ,Julie Ann Baenziger, ,Lee, ,Lilly Allen, ,Martin Kelly, ,Orange Farben, ,Roseville, ,Sacramento, ,Saint Etienne, ,Sarah Cracknell, ,Sarah Matthews, ,Sea of Bees, ,Shepherd’s Bush, ,The Mamas and The Papas, ,Tunng remix, ,U2

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