Chris Letcher

Chris Letcher is a songwriter and film composer. His debut solo album Frieze (2007) and the EP Harmonium (2008) have received glowing reviews since being released in Europe and the US, and Letcher has performed in the US, Canada, Australia, and Europe while getting extensive radio play, reaching the top 20 in the US on College Radio charts, and also featuring on the influential Morning Becomes Eclectic show on California’s KCRW, Australia’s JJJ, and BBC Radio in the UK.

Letcher is currently putting the finishing touches to a full-length follow up to Frieze to be released in February 2011. The new album shows an extensive use of wide-screen orchestration (bass clarinets, string and brass sections, mbira, singing saws as well as drum machines and analogue synthesizers) in the creation of an explicit pop-song extravaganza. The album is recorded and mixed by Finn Eiles (My Bloody Valentine, Jack Penate, Razorlight). Letcher plans to unveil the new album at Eurosonic 2011 in Groningen, with tours of the UK, Germany, Holland and the US to follow.

Letcher has recently completed the score for a BBC adaptation of DH Lawrence’s novel Women in Love.

Frieze was in the top position on both eMusic’s Commercial Alternative and Progressive Rock charts in the US for ten months, and Chris has performed at Austin’s South by Southwest, Toronto’s North by Northeast, and has recently returned from his first Australian tour. He is currently working on a full-length follow up to Frieze, set for release early in 2010. He has recently completed scoring the music for HOUR a film made in collaboration with the photographer, Tim Wainwright, and My Black Little Heart with director, Claire Angelique, and cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle (Slumdog Millionaire).

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.

Playing live with Chris are Victoria Hume (keyboards/voice), Andrew Joseph (bass), Phil Wakeman (guitar/voice) David Eugene Webb (drums/glock). Guests include Quinta (Bat for Lashes) on viola/saw.

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
“A lush orchestrated soundtrack.” Editor’s Picks, Blender, US
“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