Biography
Chris Letcher is a singer-songwriter and film composer based in London.
Frieze, his international debut release offers a combination of artistic depth, solid and accessible hooks and quirky originality. The album was one of the most downloaded albums on Emusic between November 2007 and March 2008. It is currently number 1 on the Commercial Alternative and Progressive Rock charts, and it has been receiving rave reviews around the world.
The first single from the album, ‘Deep Frieze’, was playlisted on over 100 radio stations and spent three weeks in the national US college radio top 30.
Letcher achieved his first critical and commercial success with Urban Creep, one of South Africa's biggest bands during the late 90's before going solo. In an enigmatic and singular career arc he has continued releasing stunning solo and collaborative projects, recently working with Dave Matthews and Xavier Rudd on a track for Vusi Mahlasela's album, as well as creating music for films and documentaries. He is also currently studying towards completion of his Doctorate in Music Composition at the Royal College of Music in London. Chris has recently completed the music for the Zentropa-produced film My Black Little Heart.
Chris Letcher’s solo debut, Frieze, has received acres of glowing reviews since being released in Europe and the US, and Chris has been busy performing in the US, Canada, South Africa and Europe while getting extensive radio play – not only reaching the top 20 in the US on College Radio charts, but also featuring on the influential Morning Becomes Eclectic show on KCRW. Frieze was in the top position on both eMusic’s Commercial Alternative and Progressive Rock charts in the US for ten months. Chris has played Austin’s South by Southwest, Toronto’s North by Northeast, and is now on his first Australian tour promoting Stomp’s release of Frieze, and performing in Perth, Albany, Sydney and Melbourne.
The influence of Chris’s work as a film composer is evident in Frieze’s ‘soundworld’, where strings, brass and orchestral percussion merge with found sounds, ambient street noises and overheard speech, to give the album an utterly unique, widescreen quality. Chris’s emotionally direct but impressionistic lyric-style makes each song both personal and universal. In lead song ‘Deep Frieze’ a disembodied voice reels off products in a fantastical catalogue (knitwear, ramp assembly, control module…) while a bowed glass harmonica and rising glockenspiel riff lead the listener into a wise-cracking indie rock anthem about loss and the end of a relationship (‘Hey Jason! D’you see that? They’re all so overwrought now, that’s not what you want from a band of Argonauts now’).
In ‘I Was Awake’ the perspective changes to that of a person lying in intensive care, waiting for a heart and lung transplant – contemplating the body and life’s seemingly random twists and turns; the mood is dreamy, half-hallucinated (‘life’s a dog upon the leash of lung’) while the percussive sounds are made from actual recordings of an artificial heart machine in a transplant ward. Another song, ‘Robotic Soldiers’, uses sounds recorded on the streets of downtown Johannesburg as a cinematic accompaniment to a song about a band of conscience-free automaton musicians.
London-based Chris achieved his first critical and commercial success with Urban Creep, one of South Africa's biggest rock bands. He has continued to release stunning solo and collaborative projects – recently working with Dave Matthews, Xavier Rudd and Vusi Mahlasela – as well as creating music for films and documentaries. He is currently studying towards the completion of his Doctorate in Music Composition at the Royal College of Music, London.
Performing with Chris as both collaborator and support act is Victoria Hume. Schooled equally in low-fi jazz and noirish folk, Victoria’s unique, half old-fashioned sound is at once mournful and jubilant. If she fits into the alt-folk territory occupied by Newsom and Spektor, she has nonetheless carved out something different, with a voice that ‘spins you out on sweet melodious breakdowns.’ (DurbanScouts).
Praise for Frieze:
“Keenly intelligent, musically dense, utterly memorable” Billboard
“Chris Letcher crafts songs that sound like dawn: low and creaky, slowly building to a big burst of light.” Rolling Stone
“A sense of luminous menace... further proof of the pleasure-potential of the disquieting and disturbed.” Guardian
“Letcher has created a world that feels somehow more real than the one we're living in, and when the album is over, our own world doesn't feel quite the same.” Etan Rosenbloom, Prefix Mag
“Dense, gorgeous pop” Maura Johnston, Idolator
“The most sophisticated rock album ever made by a South African Artist.” FHM
“An intricately orchestrated, sincerely sung and often humorous offering... disquieting, electro-flecked, intricately composed revenge ballads.” Critics’ Choice, London Time Out
“A lush orchestrated soundtrack.” Editor’s Picks, Blender, US
Last spring the band played SXSW in Austin, following up with a sold-out tour of South Africa and attending the South Africa Music Awards where Chris had been nominated twice, including "Best Rock". They have since showcased at Popkomm in Berlin and launched their album in the UK on 23rd October where they are currently touring.
Frieze was released in the UK by Rykodisc on September 24th 2007. The Deep Frieze video is also available on www.letchermusic.com.
Recent highlights:
Performed at SXSW in Austin, Texas in 2007
#1 most downloaded CD in the emusic.com Progressive Rock Chart in November 2007 - March 2008
#1 most downloaded CD on emusic.com Commercial Alternative Chart in November 2007 - March 2008
Top ten most downloaded CD from emusic.com, November 2007
“In the league of Radiohead and Muse” - Americana UK
“Frieze is one of those album that you listen to once and will never forget” - SUB CULTURE UK
Played by Phil Jupitus on BBC6
Played on KCRW by Nic Hardcourt during his “Morning Becomes Eclectic” show
“A truly world class album” - The Guardian (Album Of the Day)
Playlisted on 187 College stations in the USA
Single “Deep Frieze” peaked on the American College Rock Charts at #19
Playlisting and Freepicks on over 80 stations in Germany
Playlisted in France
Performed regularly at Spitz, Luminaire, Hoxton B & K and The Borderline
Nominated for Best Rock Album at the South African Music Awards in 2007
Nominated for Best Adult Contemporary Album at the South African Music Awards in 2007
http://www.letchermusic.com/about-reviews.htm
Reviews:
“Letcher has created a world that feels somehow more real than the one we're living in, and when the album is over, our own world doesn't feel quite the same.” Etan Rosenbloom, Prefix Mag
“A sense of luminous menace... proof of the pleasure-potential of the disquieting and disturbed." Guardian UK, June 2007
"Diese Album ist ein hörenswerter Gegenbeweis; Da hat jemand viel gewollt und viel geschafft." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 2007
"Fascinatingly delicate textures that enhance the somber narratives." Ken Barnes, USA Today
“Dense, gorgeous pop.” Maura Johnston, Idolator
“Makes the earnest mopes of miserable bastards like David Gray and Damien Rice look like laundry lists.” - GQ (April 2007)
“A lush orchestrated soundtrack in search of a film - you know, something big budget and with lots of expensive crane shots and boyfriends in the rain calling up to their girlfriends illuminated windows. John Cusack needs to hear this.” Mike Errico, Senior Editor - Blender Magazine, USA June 2007
"The most sophisticated rock album ever made by a South African Artist." FHM (February 2007)
"A écouter d'urgence." - Indietronica
"The album Frieze illustrates that Chris Letcher is one of the greatest songwriters to grace the shores of this southern-most tip of Africa." Lloyd Gedye, Mail & Guardian
"This is simply a great album. Truly world class. Intricate, complex, melodic, ambitious, funny, literate and so damn listenable it will make you gasp" - Jeremy Daniel, The Star
"Keenly intelligent, musically dense, utterly memorable, always sliding through any attempts to nail it down to a genre." Diane Coetzer, Billboard/Entertainment Africa
"Une grande réussite, un grand moment de bonheur simple à découvrir d'urgence..." - Mur de son
Instrumentation
Chris Letcher - Guitar, Harmonium, Synths, Singing
Dave Eugene Webb - Drums, Accordion
Andrew Joseph - Bass
Phil Wakeman - Guitar, vocal
Victoria Hume - Keyboards, vocal
Discography
Chris Letcher - FRIEZE LP -
Chris Letcher - DEEP FRIEZE Single - Playlisted on National, Community and US College Radio, in Germany and in South Africa
NEW EP OUT JUNE 2008