BILLIE RAY MARTIN: Brm New Demos 2003

Billie Ray Martin

Brm New Demos 2003

© 2004 Billie Ray Martin (634479004551)

CD permanently out of stock. Sorry!

(About MP3 downloads at CD Baby)

Electronic story telling (in demo form to preceed forthcomeing album). Back to the roots of electribe etc.

tracks

1 Je Regrette Everything
2 Dead Again
3 Twisted Lover (old Version)
4 Oprah's Book of the Month Club
5 Black Roses Sunday Valentine
6 Trigger Happy
7 You're Driving,i'm Bored
8 Silent Comes the Nighttime
9 Welcome to the Cruel World
10 The Glittering Gutter
11 Strongheaded Woman
12 The Long and Lonely Fall
13 Two Cents For a Heart of Gold

notes

13 new Billie Ray Martin songs. While 9 of the songs are back to Billie's electronic roots (even those of her group electribe 101) and are mostly moody electronic story telling with the first demo of forthcoming single 'Twisted Lover' thrown in for good measure, track 10-13 are song demos from the Martin/Tiven sessions. Recorded in NYC with long-time friends and co-writers the Tivens (production credits: Syl Johnson, Willson Picket etc), these songs are influenced by Emmylou Harris Wrecking Ball And Beyond Productions with plenty of southern soul a' la BRM added. These songs will eventually receive additional production and are here presented in their raw and 'as recorded on the day' format.but as always with billie's demos they more than pass as proper recordings and capture the mood of her songs more than any other 'finished'attampts often do .
Biography



"To describe Billie Ray Martin's sound as soulful would be an understatement. She has the sort of voice normally unheard outside gospel choirs and churches, unless you're listening to Aretha Franklin or Mahalia Jackson, that is."
The Sunday Times Magazine


To anyone with a soul, the return of Billie Ray Martin is long overdue. Where the average soul singer seems content to substitute bluster for raw emotion, Billie's voice taps into and lays bare long-withheld feelings, deep-seated memories, and passions beyond your wildest dreams... Boyz scribe, Jack Hanley once said of Billie Ray Martin, "No-one seems to understand that one of the greatest soul voices of the 21st Century belongs to a stroppy, white German bird."

Forming Electribe 101 in 1989, Billie gave dance music fans something to think about. Their first single, "Talking With Myself", rode the crest of the deep house wave with highly individual style. Its striking blend of Billie's oblique, other-worldly vocals and lush electro had critics thumbing their thesauruses ragged, leading to it being unanimously declared one of the finest records of the decade. Two more hits and an album followed, as did a Depeche Mode support tour slot. But, in 1992, Billie left the group to follow her muse at leisure, a muse that has been leading her down progressively more adventurous alleyways since infancy.

Billie grew up in Hamburg's red-light district with her working-class grandparents, who bombarded her with Elvis and German schlager music and otherwise worked hard at keeping her away from the hookers and harbour-workers that populated her family and the area they lived in. First demos were made at the tender age of five years old. Her teenage years were taken up by an obsession with the songs of Elton John, which was soon to be discarded for a lifestyle of punk, which she lived to the limit in Hamburg and London.

In the early '80s Billie moved to Berlin and had her musical sensibilities tweaked yet again: it was the time of the electronic invasion by bands like Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle and the early Human League. Billie's conceptions of music were changed entirely. Equally important, she was consciously encountering the soul music of Martha Reeves and the Vandellas and Aretha and was riding the Motown and Stax revival wave. The goal became clear: after a fruitful time of musical explorations, during which she formed a number of soul and sixties garage oriented R&B bands (Billie and the Deep, an eleven piece soul band with a garage sound, cleaned up in Berlin in 1985-86), Billie moved to London with one mission: to fuse soul and electronics (the intellectual and the emotional).

Her move couldn't have been more timely. The arrival of house from Chicago in the shape of Fingers Inc. and countless other pioneers allowed Billie to discover where her musical future lay. The rest, as they say...

Since Electribe's break-up, Billie has not only released two monumentally beautiful records ("Four Ambient Tales" and the thoroughly scary "Persuasion", made with the Grid and Spooky respectively), she has also hit the international biz-jackpot they call the charts with her 1996 smash hit "Your Loving Arms", a Europe-wide number one and a top thirty USA hit, which allowed Billie to tour extensively. The album "Deadline For My Memories" (east west) followed; a collection of soaring, sting-in-tail reflections on the subjects of unrequited love and the bizarre in everyday life. The album explored her vision to create music that is equal parts Kraftwerk and Phil Spector. Enthusiastically received, sold out shows confirmed that she had hit a nerve in a public gasping for something real. The nerve is still throbbing...

On the last album, "18 Carat Garbage", released in 2002, Billie once again developed and to a point perfected, her dream of "Memphis meets Deutschland". The basis of the songs was recorded in Memphis, Tennessee, with the legendary Hi-musicians and members of Aretha's backing band. The legendary House of Blues Studios became the playground for Billie's unorthodox visions, surprising and amusing the traditionally geared Memphis players. A duet with Billie's favourite singer, soul legend Ann Peebles ("I Can't Stand The Rain") on the album's title song makes the buff's heart jump for joy and a lifetime dream come true for Billie. Experimental electronic sounds were added to each song respectfully and only as the last polish to the (much more than 18 carat) diamond.

Last year saw a string of successful or much talked about releases and collaborations, which is set to continue in 2004:

The Billie-penned (and performed) song "Je Regrette Everything" can be heard on "NY Muscle" (Universal), the new album by DJ Hell of Gigolo records fame, and proved to be the star performance at the album's release extravaganzas in Paris and Berlin last November. Ignore the hype and you're left with a classic BRM drama-fest par excellence.

Two singles appeared on Billie's new DISCO ACTIVISTO label in 2003:

"Dead Again":
Concerning itself with the imaginary last words uttered by the King as he contemplates his fate, the song comes in three delicious mixes of the old school of aciiiiiiid and at the same time delivering classic Billie Ray Martin song writing.

She seems to have done it again on this release, getting closer and closer to her famed Electribe 101 roots.

"No Brakes on my Roller Skates":
Thrilling electro-punk fused with an infectious pop sensibility and topped off with vertiginous vocals - the song knows no limits, as Ms. Martin screams "I'm going too fast - I've got no brakes on my roller skates!"
Still a dancefloor smash at London's coolest electro clubs and championed by DJs Tasty Tim, Mark Moore and The Droyds, "Roller Skates" finds new friends with every play.
No. 8 in the Massive Records buzz chart and no. 19 in the QX buzz chart, it also got a 5 out of 5 in MixMag Update.

2004 sees Billie getting ready for the Spring release of a song she wrote and recorded with Scottish duo Slam. The track, entitled "Bright Lights Fading", will be their new single and features a typical BRM story. Holly Woodlawn meets Donna Summer with a bit of Kraftwerk for good measure, is how she puts it.
Her collaboration with DJ Hell on "Je Regrette Everything" is being prepared for release as the third single from his album.
Meanwhile, Billie is preparing to take her live score to Roman Polanski's movie "Repulsion" on tour, having received much acclaim when performed to sell-out crowds at the ICA and Electric Cinema in London. Preparations for "Repulsion - the musical" are also under way and she wants to tour her electronic extravaganza under the banner "Non-Stop Electronic Cabaret".
She has also started recording an album called: "More Ambient Tales", with producers like Lunatek confirmed as well as a brand new Billie Ray Martin full-length album.



And it's only February...........



www.billieraymartin.com

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