ANGIE PALMER: Romantica Obscura

Angie Palmer

Romantica Obscura

© 2001 Angie Palmer (634479837821)

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A beautiful voice singing wonderful, intelligent lyrics. Strong guitar playing. A great band with jazz, latin and r&b influences. This is an album you must hear.

tracks

1 Resurrection Tree
2 Lovers of the Arctic Circle
3 Notes From Underground
4 From a Blue Plains Veiw
5 Time of Thunder
6 A Thousand Tales
7 These Days
8 Waltz
9 Along Way From Paris
10 Everythings Been Said

notes

Angie Palmer has been playing and singing all her life. From busking her way round Europe at 18 to playing at Glastonbury Festival, she gathers fans where ever she plays.
With her striking looks and commanding stage presence she creates a musical force that is hard to ignore.
Female guitarists are rare, those who play as well as Angie are rarer still.
Angie's voice encompasses the blues growl of Janice Joplin through to the clear high tones of Joni Mitchel. She can be seen throughout the UK and Europe playing as a solo artist or working with her band of fantastic musicians The Revalators (most of whom are guests on her recent album Road).
She has written nearly 40 songs many of which are available on her 3 albums; A Certain Kind Of Distance( 1999), Romantica Obscura ( 2001 )
and Road (2004).

Angie Palmer: Biography.

At seventeen Angie left England for Europe, deciding to travel before taking up a place at art college, but ended up living in Paris and making a living playing music:

"I had a battered old Spanish guitar and I knew a couple of chords that an old boyfriend had shown me....I still remember the first few francs I made from playing music, I played three songs in the Paris metro and that was it...I was a minstrel following in the long tradition of the wandering musician. At least that's how I saw myself back then."

Angie spent the next seven years travelling around Europe busking, playing bars and clubs, and small festivals.

"People often comment on the aggressiveness of my playing, but a lot of my style came from pure economics: the better I played the better I ate. It was as simple as that. I wanted to be as good as I could, but I had to compete with others so I went for making my guitar sound as big as possible. I thumped and slapped it to get some percussion out of it so that I could grab people's attention. If they did that they might part with some money. i still have the old Guild that I travelled with and it looks like it has been used as cricket bat! I couldn't part with it, all my learning was done on that guitar."

Angie's time in Europe was also spent writing songs, some of which appear on her first cd: A Certain Kind of Distance which she recorded on her return to England and took around the country's blues and folk circuit, including two years appearing on the acoustic stage at Glastonbury. These were songs that Angie had been playing for a live long time and represented a solitary, travelling way of life.

Whereas Angie's first cd was a totally solo effort her next, romantica obscura, has drums and bass as well as cello, violin and congas.

"romantica obscura is a cd that I had always wanted to make; songs that have a strong lyrical element as well as a strong musical one. I guess it's a bit like Joni Mitchell's "Hejira-Summer Lawns" period, especially as the main instrument after my guitar is a fretless bass, and some of the arrangements have a more complex, yet slightly 'free' feel to them."

reviews

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  • Just get hold of this uncommonly fine album.
    author: Dave Kidman

    Angie Palmer - ROMANTICA OBSCURA (Akrasia PMCD. 2) Angie's name isn't at all well-known outside the north-west UK (where she is very well-known), but all that ought by rights to change now, for there's an incredible sense of assurance and mature accomplishment about her current work that's obvious right from the outset on this, her second CD; This new release, though recognisably the work of the same artist, is quite different to her first, not only in that it's less overtly bluesy. Firstly, it consists entirely of her own songs, which indicates that Angie's defiantly growing in confidence. Secondly, Angie's here taken the opportunity to record with musicians from the Manchester scene - Mike Isaac (who works with Lyrica) on fretless bass is particularly good, then there's Chris Mannis (ex-Swing Out Sister, now with Apitos) on percussion, also drummer Tim Franks, Graham Clark on violin and Rebecca Maunders on cello, and keyboardist Bill Roberts. Though from different musical arenas, they work together really well, and the instrumentation is well-considered and never unduly dominant, providing perfectly controlled settings for Angie's grittily expressive voice and doing her songs (the "hidden stories" to which the title neatly alludes) true justice. A lot of thought has gone into the arrangements, which cleverly vary texture and effect from the jazzy organ-bop optimism of Notes From Underground to the darker, more introspective, even mournful mood of the last few tracks, like A Thousand Tales (where the string instruments bring in a delicate eastern modal feel that's really attractive), and the deceptively simple, deliciously chamber-textured Waltz (which isn't quite!), whereas the swooping violin lines on From A Blue Plains View rather reminded me of Dylan circa Desire. Angie acknowledges a debt to Joni Mitchell (Hissing/Hejira period), but nowhere does her own outstanding writing sound in the slightest bit imitative. Angie's music is hard to pigeonhole, nor would I wish to do so; just get hold of this uncommonly fine album, you won't regret it. (Contact: www.angiepalmer.com) Dave Kidman ‘Net Rythmns’

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