The Other Woman – the UK’s only all female new music playlist – broadcasts on Amazing Radio & is presented by Ruth Barnes who searches out the best new music from female artists and female fronted bands. The Vortex and The Other Woman have joined forces for tonight’s show, bringing together two very different but equally intriguing performers.
Julia Kent
Opportunities for introspection have come few and far between for Canadian-born, New York City-based cellist Julia Kent. After coming to prominence as a member of the cello-driven group Rasputina in the ‘90s, she went on to arrange and play on numerous recordings and tour extensively as a member of Antony and the Johnsons, among other projects.
The opportunity to explore her own emotional and creative world came with her solo LPs, Delay (2007) and Green and Grey (2011), and it is something she appropriates fully on her captivating debut for The Leaf Label, Character.
Recorded alone in her home studio, Character develops the layering techniques Kent brought to the fore on her previous solo material, the flow of intertwining cello motifs working as an external representation of competing internal meditations. “I ended up thinking about the process of life,” explains Kent. “How sometimes a narrative in fiction is meant to mirror the chronology of human life, and how our lives, in a way, can resemble works of fiction, but without the possibility of controlling the outcome the way an author can.” Thus, she called the album Character, a reference to the notion of humans being characters in their own narrative.
MADAM
Madam are a 5 piece band, fronted by writer/producer Sukie Smith, whose music evokes the widescreen, nocturnal world of an obscure American movie.
Latest album “Gone Before Morning” was recorded at Real World Studios (Peter Gabriel’s converted mill in Wiltshire.) and they’re back from a sell out European tour to showcase new songs that will be make up part of their 3rd album. This is the first time audiences will have heard these tracks.
“Compellingly gritty and haunting” **** Q Magazine
