Roisin Murphy's debut solo album is to be pre-released as
a series of three strictly limited edition EPs early this year, ahead
of its more formal emergence on cd in the spring. Beginning with Sequins1
in the first week of January, each of these lavishly packaged, heavy-weight
vinyl, 12-inch-only releases will take four of the tunes from the
record and make them available at six-week intervals leading up the
album's release in June. All
the tracks on the Sequins series are the results of Roisin's
new fruitful collaboration with producer Matthew Herbert, who
she met as a result of his remix work for her band Moloko.
This is the first time the highly-revered electronic pioneer Herbert
has produced an album for another artist, aside from his wife Dani
Siciliano. Here the significant ground covered on Sequins 1
by Roisin and Herbert indicates what to expect from the broader scope
of the pair's collaboration on the forthcoming album.“Having worked on several Moloko remixes from as early as 1996 Roisin's voice had become a familiar friend ,” says Herbert .” I had always loved the ease with which it sat in the textures of the sounds I work with. To work on her solo record struck me as the perfect place to try and mix proper musical charisma with noises not often heard on the radio.” The first Sequins EP commences with the agenda-setting Ruby Blue , which begins with an ear-catching meld of distorted funk and Andrews Sisters harmonies. It slides around like a languid and sinuous eel, all finger-pops and syncopated handclaps, before busting out with a too-loud fuzz guitar and Roisin's provocative kitten purr. Off On It, which follows, has a percussive track that sounds like a steam train pulling slowly out of a siding, while Roisin delightfully slurs her way through a miasma of flirtatious signs and signifiers. Third up, Night Of the Dancing Flame is like a lost classic number featuring either the elephants on parade from the Jungle Book (tremendous muted trumpet blasts) or Josephine Baker in all her Parisian glory. As it lollops along with cartoonish gait, Roisin tells more tales of sexual abandon in not entirely private places, and you realise that between them her and Herbert might have hit upon a long untapped resource of Cab Calloway-influenced pop music. It's crazy and not a little infectious.  ‘Sequins 1' is completed by the magical warmth of Through Time , which in its hazier moments approaches the gentle feel of one of the great ballads off a good Stevie Wonder record. The Sequins EPs will also introduce another powerfully creative collaboration with the artist Simon Henwood, who has painted a number of large-scale portraits of Roisin, which are to be exhibited at the Hospital in London in March 2005, and will be reproduced one at a time as the sleeves to ‘Sequins 1 – 3'. source: roisinmurphy.co.uk |