After a killer show in a bizarre snowy week in NZ at ‘Antarctica,’ Adu swings into the LA artrocker heat doing a solo show at Chinatown art gallery Human Resources and finishing off with a Cocteau Twins tribute as guest vocalist in LA band ‘Queue’ at legendary venue The Smell
friday august 26, 8.30pm
Leila Adu
howardAmb
@ Human Resources
410 Cottage Home St in Chinatown, 90012
LOS ANGELES
saturday august 27, 8.00
‘COCTEAU TWINS TRIBUTE’
Life Group
Upsilon Acrux (featuring Barrie Rose)
Magic Johnson
Luis Naranjo and Dani Elowe project
QUeUe (feat. Leila Adu)
Abe Vigoda
Dunes
@ The Smell
247 s main street downtown
LOS ANGELES
10 August 2011- For Immediate Release:
Antarctica, Friday, August 19, San Francisco Bath House, $15 presale ($20 on the door)
featuring: Leila Adu, Riki Gooch, Alphabethead & The Labcoats
w/ selections from the MLKBDGR crates. Tickets – Under the Radar
Antarctica – that wide, white space, a place where the imagination is free to roam. You will be taken to the musical equivalent of a place like that: Leila Adu, Riki Gooch, Alphabethead, The Labcoats and MLKBDGR have the staple secret. They can take you there.
These are artists-as-explorers. This is sonic excavation. Something you can really dig.Photo by Leon Dale
Leila Adu is readying her fifth album – she’s fresh from winning MTV Iggy’s Artist of the Week and has returned to New Zealand from her American home-base to tour and record. In recent years she has wowed audiences across Europe and America. She has performed improvised and composed pieces, as a solo artist, in small combos and with larger ensembles – she has two tracks featured on the upcoming album from Italian electronica act, MDF. Leila writes songs that are tiny but bold; huge but obtainable. She is a unique voice as writer and composer; she’ll take you to an aural Antarctica – a place of infinite discovery. Media Relations/Hi-Res Images
Riki Gooch has produced solo singers, backed folk-pop players; he masterminded the Eru Dangerspiel big band and has played with a couple of other bands you might have heard of. Is he Wellington’s own Moondog? Or is he the Capital City’s Fela Kuti? Riki has created soundscapes across electronica and dub; he sits inside the beat while living further beyond the fringe. He has a heavy metal bebop inside him that pulses deep. For this performance Gooch will be performing his Cave Circles EPs with video artists Toby and Melissa Donald. And Ant Donaldson will be on stage with Riki. They’ll take you to an aural Antarctica – a place you have never been before.
Alphabethead is a wizard of the turntables – a composer who places found sounds in surprising new contexts. He takes tunes you think you’ve heard before and makes tunes you’ll never hear again. He charts his own path through almost every genre. With Alphabethead it’s always a fresh journey through the past to the future. He can take you to an aural Antarctica – he’s a sonic navigator.
The Labcoats is an improvising collective that knows how to uncover a buried groove. They have science at their fingertips and wear their art on their sleeves. No turn will be left unstoned in the search for a new jazz; a new way to groove – a new set of moves. The Labcoats will lay you out like patience itself has been etherized and feeling stable. They’ll take you to an aural Antarctica – they may just build you a brand new one.
MLKBDGR – will be providing the glue; the invisible threads that stitch the spaces together between these vibrant acts. MLKBDGR will take you to an aural Antarctica – he’ll steal one for you; he’ll slip it to you quickly.
RG “A humble, yet incredibly talented maestro showing us the way forward.” –3 Network News
AH “Alphabethead amazed and dazzled with his rapid and accurate hand work, sliding effortlessly from turntables to sliders to switches and balance – no wonder he won – this is a man possessed.” – Melbourne ‘In The Mix Awards’
LA “This young New Zealander of Ghanaian descent treats genre distinctions in much the same way that Godzilla treated those little cities made out of cardboard.” –MTV Iggy
After a great turn out last week for the two screenings of Strawberries with the Fuhrer the NZ Film Festival are putting on two more screenings at the New Zealand Film Archive!!!
11.00am Saturday 13th August
11.30am Sunday 14th August
Tickets are available via Ticketek or at the Film Archive
Directed by Amy O’Connor and Co-Produced by Anna Cottrell. Sound by Victoria Parsons, Mixed by Gareth Ruck, Cello played by Nigel Collins & Original Music by Leila Adu
MDF feat. Leila Adu electronica track – ‘Prendi Uno’ – is currently showcased on Berlin’s Krake Festival video. Italy based electronica project MDF, will release their album featuring two tracks with Adu’s vocals later this year along with a new video for ‘Prendi Uno’ –> stay tuned… Video shoot for 'Prendi Uno' in Rome, 2011
San Fran Bathhouse presents a killer line-up for this one off Wellington show…….explorations, new creations and unreleased adventures from the following artists….
After a heated voting session, Leila has been chosen as MTV Iggy’s Artist of the Week! We’d like to give a huge thanks to fans for voting around the globe and special thanks to everyone for spreading the word, tweeters, facebookers and bloggers such as Bold As Love and to MTV Iggy for zoning into music from downunder!
“The readers have spoken. This week, we stray away from conventional logic to honor New Zealand’s jazzy, delightfully erratic alt-pop virtuoso Leila Adu, our new Artist of the Week!…” by Halley — Read more: Artist of the Week: New Zealand’s Unpredictable Leila Adu
“Leila Adu is an artist with the ability to strike endlessly fascinating balances. She is a classically trained pianist, with a graduate degree in composition, who plays a lot of rock clubs and festivals. Her music combines the dissonance of avant garde composers and free jazz artists like Sonny Sharrock with the playful experimentation and fierce social commentary of punk provocateurs like Nina Hagen and Eve Libertine…” by Beverly — Read More: Bands We Like: New Zealander Leila Adu’s Mercurial Keys
Leila will play alongside a group of musicians and dancers including Warren Maxwell and his headlining band Trinity Roots along with Urban Dance and Rescue, The Buttercuts, Paddy Bleakley and his band of fellow funky freaks. The ‘Us for Them’ event is put on by the Te Waka Toi o Paetumokai Featherston Arts Trust uniting Wairarapa communities to raise funds for Christchurch Women’s Refuge, an organisation that helps families and communities create better futures for themselves by supporting women and children to become and stay safe from family violence. Please Support the Refuge who are in special need after recent government funding cuts and the Christchurch earthquake.
THE BIG BUSK – Child Cancer Foundation
Friday 20 May Midday – 3pm
Plum Cafe
103 Cuba Street
Wellington
The Big Busk 2011 is part of New Zealand Music Month in May, bringing together hundreds of Kiwis singing New Zealand music for New Zealand children with cancer. Plum Cafe is hosting Leila Adu, Barnaby Weir, Louis Baker, Lisa Tomlins, Chris Yeabsley, Eva Prouse, Ryan Prebble, Lucien Johnson, Iva Lamkum, Dan Yeabsley, Nikita Bryant, Trya Keelan, Claire Terry, Mara Simpson, King Homeboy, Toby Laing and Andy Mauafua. How you can help
Between concerts in Europe and New York for the ‘Ode to the Unknown Factory Worker’ CD release tour, Leila has detoured to New Zealand to visit friends and family affected by the Februay 22 Christchurch earthquake. Click here for Rose Quartz blog’s Christchurch Earthquake Relief Fundraiser Compilation
With no venues left open in her hometown, Leila performed an impromptu house concert in Christchurch and a tour concert in the capital of Wellington where she found brilliant Film Director and Choreographer, Alyx Duncan— director of the award-winning music video ‘Fuji’ for Wellington-based band Minuit
Screen Shot from Alyx Duncan's Award Winning Music Video 'Fuji' by Minuit
Alyx and Leila are working towards the video single for a new album – the track was recorded in London by Alex Morris at the Briggs Warehouse and features Leila’s vocals, rhodes & analog synths with De Santis (aka MDF) drums
Leila in Pisa, Italy by Dania Gennai
Leila Adu has completed the European leg of the ‘Ode to the Unknown Factory Worker’ CD Release Tour and she hits the States again in the Spring. She played in duo with Orlando Greenhill with Pitch Like Masses, Falsetto Teeth & Peter Mayer in LA and continued through Europe with the ‘Ode’ drummer Daniele de Santis, along with Mills Projects, Dead Days Beyond Help, Limeheaded Dog, Poino, Otto Fischer & Dave I.D.
‘Ode to the Unknown Factory Worker’ has garnered reviews by Beverly at MTV Iggy, Kambui at URB ALT, Gianluca Diana of Alias and Rock IT, Antonio Pellicori of All About Jazz Italy, Giancarlo Turra of Sentire Ascoltare and Enrico Bettinello of Blow Up, among others. The CD is available online and as a physical import in the U.S., as well as in selected European stores. Thanks to everyone who has already purchased ‘Ode to the Unknown Factory Worker,’ as well as Leila’s previous albums!
The ‘Fortuna’ video single directed by Boston Fielder has been viewed 660 times in 5 days, with an independent marketing campaign. Leila is already working on a new avant-garde electro song album with hot producers around the globe and will be represented at SXSW 2011.
Leila Adu caps European leg of Ode to the Unknown Factory Worker Tour with debut of the music video “Fortuna”
“…Leila Adu is a Revelation…” – Robert Wyatt, legendary founder of Soft Machine and Bjork collaborator
“Leila Adu is a rebel-inspirer. And not in the way that calls for the raising of fists, or the hurling of sharp word-blades. Her defiance is decided… Anger isn’t its mother. Wonder may be.” – Purple Magazine
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Leila Adu. Photo by Leon Dale. Styling by EightyJane
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“Fortuna” is the second single and first video from Ode to the Unknown Factory Worker by Leila Adu
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Read reviews of Leila Adu’s Ode to the Unknown Factory Worker HERE
Touching down in locales as varied as Los Angeles, London, Rome, Sicily and Berlin, Leila Adu has successfully completed the first segment of her recent “Ode to the Unknown Factory Worker” album tour. Emboldened by a steady flow of critical acclaim, the London-born Ghanaian/New Zealander steals a moment to release the music video for “Fortuna,” the second single from “Ode to the Unknown Factory Worker.” “Fortuna” will appear on popular music media channels, websites and blogs throughout the globe beginning on Tuesday, March 8th.
“Fortuna” features recent performance video of Leila on organ/vocals accompanied by her drummer, De Santis in Berlin’s intimate music venue, Ausland. Video director Boston Fielder and his production group Odd Endeavors sought to reveal the ethereal yet dissonant blues of the song by using images captured during the heat of the tour with basic consumer video cameras. “Fortuna” lyrics of loneliness and perseverence such as “What goes down must come up/A circle or a cycle or a wheel” are realized through the use of raw found footage, time lapse manipulations, abstract layering and slow motion movement studies. Fielder says “there is a dreamy almost innocent quality to Leila’s work that can suddenly be usurped by waves of musical aggression. That dichotomy is what I wanted to capture. It’s what makes her music SOUL music.”
Leila Adu is humble yet confidently leaping from time zone to time zone in search of the next great adventure. She is an artist whose musical fortunes are on the rise internationally. It’s only fitting that “Fortuna” be her next offering to the world.
Leila Adu is available for interviews and other press opportunities.
Click HERE for Hi-Res images of Leila Adu.
Contact: Jess Levy at Little Red Hen Publishing for more information.
*** Leila Adu
Ode to the Unknown Factory Worker
(S/R, 1/18/2011)
Track Listing:
01. Martian Raft
02. Brazen Hussy
03. Must Walk Slowly
04. Trojan Cow
05. Ode to the Unknown Factory Worker
06. The One Minute Pastry Song
07. Fortuna
08. Glass
09. Slick Department Store
10. A Moment of Peace
11. Cigarettes and Circus Puffs
