James Blake isn’t your average electronic musician. The 23-year old British composer and former dubstep producer has harnessed, over the span of several EPs and a fantastic debut full-length album, an exciting and fascinating ability to create some of the most creative music to come into the realm of electronica in quite some time. At first, it almost sounds minimalist, with haiku-like lyrics being repeated over only a small spectrum of sound, but then it builds into a fantastic symphony of carefully selected tones and sounds, with Blake’s own distorted and velvety voice floating in between. The result is truly astounding.
Thus… The Bird and The Bee met in the music’s great multiverse, amongst the planets spinning all around us… wed… and consummated the marriage with a beautiful melody…
Dubbed “Spooky Adu” by Steve Albini (Nirvana, Joanna Newsom, PJ Harvey producer) who recorded her solo album, Dark Joan, “Leila Adu takes you on an aural journey that most progressive rock albums could only attempt.” Raised in New Zealand of Ghanaian descent, Adu has produced three acclaimed albums, written for and sung with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, toured extensively and had radio play in the UK, mainland Europe, the US, Australasia, Russia and the Far East.
Leila Adu has a distinct sound, one that in its antiquity finds a fresh niche space among the mainstream current. Adu’s music reflects her own rich and diverse identity, blending indigenous sounds from the South Pacific and Ghana with tangibly fantastical instrumentation – a sonic funhouse of second glances and expanded perceptions. There’s a strong sense of Steampunk flowing through Adu’s Cherry Pie in the Factory Worker’s honorable eye – ear rather – demeanor, as otherworldly themes coalesce with Victorian-tinged melodies. So below: take a listen at the old, the featured, and the new of the one Miss Leila Adu…
