Along with …Open Spaces, here's another CD given to me by a musician as kind of swap for a copy of the Book.
I gave a talk at the RSA to launch the Book, and the organisers wanted to get a couple of people to respond to me, a pundit and an up-and-coming musician. They wanted Stuart Maconie for the former slot, but I suspected they wouldn't get him (he doesn't live in London, for a start) and recommended Andrew Collins as a sub, knowing that he hates being thought of as Maconie's sub — they got Andrew. They weren't sure where to start with a musician, though, and, at first, neither was I. But I remembered speaking to a woman who'd got in touch via Ecademy some months earlier, when she was finishing off recording her first album for a major record label. That was Claire and she was just my only lead. So I was pretty grateful when I got back in touch to ask if she was up for talking about her experience for 5-10 minutes, and she said yes.
We met once before the RSA talk when I was able to get her on the guest list for a Music Tank event, as I was on the panel there, giving a response to a talk by Tom Robinson. That was when I gave her a Book and she gave me this pre-release copy of her album. She also gave a copy to Tom, and thus gained her first ever radio play (I think) on the first ever edition of his Introducing programme.
Claire was fantastically professional and enthusiastic at the RSA and we kept in touch, becoming friends and, inevitably, mutual fans of each other's Facebook pages. By that time the label that paid for the recording had decided not to release it. Over the next few months, Claire had a frustrating time, being given the run around by two other major labels and at least one prominent independent label. In the end she released the album herself through Artists Without a Label, I think, initially as a download-only (I got it in September 2008), though a physical CD version followed last year — all complemented by great artwork — click the links below to see it — and this video for one of the songs, which got lots of positive comments from my friends when I shared it on Facebook (I see there's a remix with new video out in a couple of weeks).
This album always reminds me of my US Book 'Tour' (one short talk at a conference in Minneapolis, then on to San Francisco, ostensibly to network with the industry, but actually just to kill some time until Guy, Paul, Nic and Scott turned up for the Rust Fest). Throughout those nine days My Day (re-titled Those Thousand Seas for the official release) was on my old iPod Shuffle and soundtracked much of the hanging around in airports. It's not the kind of music that I listen to a lot — the CD Baby page draws comparisons with Dido, Enya and Kate Bush — but the songs really grew on me. It really helped seeing Claire play them live a couple of times in 2008, with small acoustic groups. The album's production by Mike Hedges does really great things with Claire's voice, I find the synthetic backing (a kind of Celtic William Orbit sound) a bit samey after a while. But then here's a review by someone who clearly doesn't think it could get any better than it already is.
I haven't seen Claire for quite a few months now, but I heard one of the songs being played in Caffe Nero (she was their artist of the month) last autumn.
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Buy CD from CD Baby Buy from iTunes |
Claire's MySpace Listen to this album in full at Last.fm Listen to this album in full at Spotify |
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