Lucy Love - Kilo (Australian Edition)

Catalogue No:

OTH94024

Label:

Other Tongues

Release Date:

15/7/2011

Format:

CD

Track Listing

1. Poison
2. Thunder [free download: radio edit]
3. Monday
4. Dirty Sleazy
5. Who You Are
6. Unfreeze
7. Run Away
8. I’m A Rapper
9. Drug
10. Killer Catchy
11. End Of Time
12. Who You Are (OK Formula Remix)
13. Thunder (Dolmen D&B Remix)
14. Monday (Dark Dub)

Info

Lucy Love is the epitome of a modern star. She represents an era of cultural flux, where forging your own identity means hard work but great rewards. Her influences range from underground through to the mainstream, from across the decades and across the world – but, crucially, they are selected with an eagle eye for what works together and what represents her as a person and as an artist. As she says herself: “I know who I am and what I want, and that means it’s easy to fit in.”

She makes it sound so simple, but it’s no small feat. On her second album ‘Kilo’, the followup to 2009’s acclaimed ‘Superbillion’, pop, hip hop, club music, art and technology come together, all focused towards the expression of her singular vision and personality. Costume, video, dance and design are as important to what she does as her relentlessly hooky grooves and honest, outspoken lyrics. This is where a rich tradition of pop theatrics, from Grace Jones and Kraftwerk through electroclash to Lady Gaga, meets the irreverence and sonic force of the UK underground, Scandinavian craftsmanship and a good dose of the southern African party mentality.

Born Lucy Siame in 1985 in Zambia to an English mother, but raised in Denmark, she couldn’t really help but have a sense of how cultures and subcultures can coexist. She was immersed in music from birth, too: as one of her breakthrough songs attests, her “Daddy Was A DJ” since the beginning of the 1980s who came from Zambia to seek his fortune and good times in northern Europe. Lucy grew up to a soundtrack of 80s funk, disco and Danish music, “constant partying, wet-look hair and very funky music!”. At 13 she went to Zambia to see her dad’s old club, and saw how truly non-stop his partying could be. It wasn’t exactly responsible parenting, but the lesson in the other side of life clearly stuck with her. Her mother, meanwhile, came from the South London suburb of Croydon, and Lucy spent a lot of time there with her family, absorbing the British way of life, sense of humour, and indeed somewhat of a cokney accent. “When I’m abroad,” she says, “people see me as a Scandinavian artist. But in England, people recognise certain things in the humour of what I’m doing and in the language that maybe other people don’t get. And it’s very important to me that they do because music and clubs in England and especially in London has meant so much to me.”

Indeed, that music literally changed the course of Lucy’s life. It was her sister, a dancer, who was consideredto have inherited the musical genes, while Lucy was studying art at college with every intention ofbecoming a painter. But her trips to London making music and raving were becoming more and more apart of her life. In particular, the Tru Playaz sessions at Fabric got her completely hooked on the hardestand heaviest of jungle and drum’n’bass, with garage and grime grabbing her attention too.

Back in Denmark she began to get involved in club nights and raves, and started to freestyle songs over a DJ friend’s tracks. The more she sang and wrote, the more she became obsessed with pop music cultureand the art of performance, until eventually she switched the focus of her degree from painting to multimediaart and costume design. With the music she was creating with producer Yo Akim at the heart ofeverything she did, she explored every angle available: videos, stage outfits, lighting, dance – everythingbecame part of the totality that was the fast-developing Lucy Love project. Her fashion sense and visualstyle as a painter had always been “bold and edgy” anyway, and the more she explored pop art and thevisual style of musicians like Kraftwerk, Prince and Lady Gaga, the more she realised she could apply thisaesthetic to every aspect of the project.

From the first single “No VIP” onwards, Lucy Love expressed an uncompromising manifesto in word,sound and image. She was already building a tight-knit team around her (including her “more musical”sister as one of her dancers), and everything was approached with an ethos of self-determination and not allowing the artwork’s clarity to be diluted by outside influence. “Lucy Love is from the heart,” she explains, “and I’m running it, I’m taking the decisions, and the message is that people should be moreaware of what they’re doing and what values they have. And for me that’s about ambition and goals andwanting to work hard.” Everything has been done on a shoestring, but with the ingenuity of true artistsand an innate understanding of the possibilities that technology now offers, Lucy and team have createdvideos, costumes and shows that are never less than dazzling.

And every step of the way, this has given the project a rare integrity, but let it remain fun at the sametime: “progressive, but still kitsch in a way”. Though you can see and hear grime, jungle, electropop, indieintensity of songwriting, classic science fiction and many more influences, it’s delivered with that steelyfocus and determination that has won over audiences online and in the flesh. Lucy is already a big dealat home in Denmark, but winning over small but demanding club crowds in her beloved London was justas important: playing at legendary west London club night YoYo was a key turning point for her. “Thiswas a crowd that isn’t easy to impress,” she remembers; “if they don’t like it they don’t dance, and I reallywanted to win them over – so when we did I felt like, OK, this is really working!”

With her second album out in mid-July on Other Tongues, it’s apparent that Lucy is constantly broadeningthe scope of what she does. Her early songs displayed attitude, honesty and wit, and all these are stillpresent, but as she grows into her identity the songs are growing in emotional power too. The musical climate,too, seems to be becoming ever more suited to her: electronic music is producing more and moreartists with crossover appeal, and Lucy has that by the tonne. Some people fear that too much information,too much availability of culture, too much of everything is making musicians lose their identity – butsomeone like Lucy, who knows who she is and what she wants, who understands subculture and the artof pop is a shining example of why that needn’t be the case.

“She’s been touted as the Danish MIA and the female Dizzee Rascal. But hell, she is herown gal and she does what she does well. Introducing Lucy Love. She’s just released herdebut album which boast styles of hip hop, grime and pretty much anything else that requiresthe big bass boom!”  TRIPLE J