Jo Hamilton
Birmingham, England, United Kingdom | INDIE
Music
Press
Hamilton is that rare thing: a female pop act who is neither electro-pop poppet nor the sort of artist you simply can't write about without using the word "kooky".
Hamilton's debut is the sort of record that will spread purely by word of mouth: think Annie Lennox produced by Peter Gabriel. It's adult, but never pretentious, slick, but never sickly. In a world of La Roux, Lady Gaga, Little Boots and all, Hamilton is an artist who dares to step out of the boxes we have reserved for our female singer-songwriters. - Simmy Richman
Exotic Scot mixes gamelan, psychedelia, string quartets and sensuality...Jo Hamilton takes the path between sex and spirituality. - Mojo - Phil Sutcliffe
Scottish chamber-folk artist Jo Hamilton spent a peripatetic childhood shuttling around the Middle East, Cambodia and Sri Lanka, during which time she clearly soaked up a range of musical influences.
It's a habit she's never shaken off, with parts of Gown either written or recorded in Jamaica, Cambodia and elsewhere, the results stirred along with her classically trained strings, synths and guitars into miasmic, oceanic mixes that variously recall the likes of Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush and Björk. "Exist" is an arresting opening to the album, with a chopped-up guitar collage and Hamilton's layered veils of Tim Buckley-esque wordless vocals; it's followed by "Pick Me Up", where dulcimer and violin colouration tints an itchy electric guitar riff. Elsewhere, "Paradise" crystallises from overheard mumblings into a seductive samba. The most routine arrangement is "All In Adoration", funk-soul so light it almost floats away; but all the songs are infused with the breathy sultriness of Hamilton's vocals, her seductive strains promoting the attitude of songs like "Pick Me Up" and "There It Is": "Climbing into the future/ Leaving a wake of life/Fresh ideas for the picking/Throw them seeds behind". An absorbing experience.
Download this: Exist (Beyond My Wildest Dreams), Pick Me Up, There It Is, Paradise
**** - Independent - Andy Gill
Slaughtered Lamb Gig- April 2010
"Singular and unforgettable, Hamilton is quite a discovery." - The Guardian
"...an amazing voice that can glide like KD Lang or essay Bjork weirdness." - Uncut Magazine
"Absolutely Gorgeous" - Janice Long, BBC Radio
Daughter of a white Caribbean mother and white Kenyan father of Shetland heritage, her nomadic childhood saw the mesmerisingly willowy JO HAMILTON grow up in Scotland when she wasn’t in Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Sri Lanka. She is, though, now a familiar face on the Birmingham music scene and is signed to local based production company Poseidon run by Jon Cotton, the producer of Scott Matthews’ Novello winning Passing Stranger.
Her musical past has found her touring with Colin Vearncombe, contributing viola and vocals to Kirsty McGee's debut album and singing lead and playing viola for Ashley Hutchings in both the Albion Band and Rainbow Chasers. Her own album has been a long time coming, but Gown is more than worth the wait.
She’s been likened to Bush, Harvey and Lennox as well as Regina Spektor and Imogen Heap, and while you’ll hear the comparisons, she’s still very much her own voice. The album is an exotic musical journey, brushing the multicultural world wings of dreamy celestial pop tinged with Gaelic mist (Exist), cobwebby jazz soul folk (The Bush infused Pick Me Up), airy Brill building balladry (There It Is), the panoramic rhythms of African plains (How Beautiful), and the melting icicle soulful ebb and flow fragility of Deeper (Glorious). Then there’s the Weill cabaret shades to All In Adoration with its puttering percussion beats and woodwind trills, the classical hymnal majesty of Liathach’s choral beauty and, drawing on her time in Cambodia, the intoxicatingly hushed seductiveness that is Mekong Song.
She’s releasing Winter Is Over a a trailer single, a playfully catchy pizzicato plucked strings waltzer that suggests a sort of Oriental Bjork by way of an arthouse 40s Broadway musical. But it’s the closing Think Of Me that’s the real deceptive killer, a windchime, musical box Gaelic lullaby that floats you away on a pillow of clouds and twinkling night stars.
Sophisticated, sensuous, complex, layered and utterly beguiling, there’s a song here called Paradise. A better description of the album would be hard to conjure. - Mike Davies/Netrhythms
Discography
Debut single 'Winter is Over', released 6th April 2009, was on rotation on 14 regional and national stations in the UK, and featured on BBC Radio 2. The subsequent single, Pick Me Up, has received similar play statistics, and has also been highlighted on BBC 6 throughout 2010.
Jo was featured artist on BBC Radio 2 twice in one week during July 2009 (Aled Jones and Janice Long shows - Janice Long - "absolutely gorgeous").
The next single is scheduled for June 2010.
In Jan/Feb 2010 tastemaker Nic Harcourt at KCRW Los Angeles featured Gown as one of his top 4 picks for the year, playlisting the entire album continuously for 10 days 29th Jan onwards.
Jo has recently played Union Chapel London and Town Hall Birmingham, opening for Scott Matthews and is currently scheduling shows for 2010.
Photos
Bio
**** The Guardian
**** Mojo
**** The Independent
**** Uncut
**** Rock n Reel
**** themusiccritic.co.uk
"Singular and unforgettable, Hamilton is quite a discovery" - The Guardian
“In a world of La Roux, Little Boots and Lady Gaga, this is an unashamedly grown-up record that dares to step out of the boxes we have reserved for our female singer-songwriters." - The Independent on Sunday
“When Jo sings, something thaws that I didn’t even realise was frozen.” - Sweet Billy Pilgrim (Mercury Music Prize Nominees 2009)
"Awesome" Janice Long, BBC Radio 2
“A staggering voice that can brush softly against your soul or fill you with the intensity of an earthquake” - Scott Matthews (Ivor-Novello award-winning singer/songwriter)
“Gown could well become the blueprint for the progression of folk and it sets quite a standard” Dave Adair - Glasswerk
“Sophisticated, sensuous, complex, layered and utterly beguiling, there’s a song here called Paradise. A better description of the album would be hard to conjure.” - Mike Davies (netrhythms.co.uk)
“...intelligent, uncompromising material, gentle, muscular, and deeply appealing. [Jo Hamilton's] work deserves your attention, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to get just that; if not today, then tomorrow." - Robin Valk (Radio To Go)
“ That has got to be the most beautiful thing I've ever heard” - Stirling University Radio
"Hugely impressive". themusiccritic.co.uk
“Fearlessly unique...a remarkable album; heady and addictive” Rock n Reel
"Quite enchanting...the British answer to Bjork...Fascinating woman...brilliant artist" Andy Howard – BBC Bristol
“At this time of recession and great uncertainty, Jo reminds us what it is to wonder at the world” - Nishwa Ashraf - Society Today magazine
Discovered and produced by Jon Cotton, producer of Scott Matthews' Ivor Novello Award-winning 'Passing Stranger', Gown is a mesmerising work of left-of-centre pop, threaded-through with hope and surmounted by the uniquely stunning voice of Jo Hamilton.
Jo's music is elemental, an empathatic commentary reflecting our hopes, our glories and our tragedies. She unflinchingly reworks and applies the nostalgia of the old Gaelic lullabies of her childhood to a multicultural world of iPods and urbanism, often with devastating effect. As the TV flickers out and credit cards are declined, Jo reminds us what it is to wonder at the world, and that while we can still do so, there’s always hope.
Stemming from a nomadic family with roots in both Kenya and Jamaica, Jo Hamilton was brought up in a house two miles from the nearest neighbour in the wilds of northern Scotland. Her parents moved constantly in her youth, which saw her spending periods in Turkey, UAE, Kuwait, Sri Lanka and Cambodia.
In her late teens Jo studied viola in Edinburgh and at Birmingham Conservatoire. During this period the first hints of a solo talent began to emerge; she quietly recorded an early 3-track EP with the help of guitarist/drummer/producer Tom Livemore (the Ripps/Carina Round/Glen Ballard), and then went on to create a self-produced album of early songs (Palace Place) with the help of other musicians. It was during the recording of Palace Place that she first met producer Jon Cotton (subsequently producer of Scott Matthews' Ivor Novello winning Elusive), with whom she remained in touch over the next four years.
In the meantime, Jo began performing more widely, supporting Damien Rice and Michelle Shocked, and touring with Colin
Vearncombe (Black) in the UK. She contributed viola and vocals to Kirsty McGee's first album, and was invited by Fairport Convention founder (and discoverer of Nick Drake) Ashley Hutchings to sing lead vocals and play viola with first the Albion Band and then his new band the Rainbow Chasers on several European tours.
While welcomed by the folk world, Jo continued to develop her own very different, much darker and more layered material. She worked on developing sounds with Tom Livemore and a live band, and started using a computer for the first time to write. She travelled to Cambodia, making field recordings on a little minidisc recorder which accompanied her everywhere - recordings which were later incorporated into her work.
Back in the UK, the combined songs she'd accumulated with Tom, on her sequencers and in Cambodia began to take shape as an album. On hearing the sketches, Jon Cotton signed her to his production company Poseidon, and over the next two years they developed the songs into the album Gown.
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