Kirsty Almeida
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Kirsty Almeida

Manchester, England, United Kingdom | SELF

Manchester, England, United Kingdom | SELF
Band Folk Acoustic

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"REVIEW: KIRSTY ALMEIDA - PURE BLUE GREEN"

Kirsty Almeida: Pure Blue Green
Friday August 27,2010
By Simon Gage
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WE ARE knee deep in girl singers at the moment, most of them pretty good, so it takes a unique talent to stand out from the crowd.

Kirsty Almeida is that talent, her debut album a gorgeous collection of brilliantly written and performed songs ranging from jazzy through ballady to throw-down party songs.
Add to that a voice that is by turns delicate and storming, personality that seeps out of every seam and you have an artist and an album to treasure. Delicious.
- The Daily Express


"Amy Rich thinks Kirsty Almeida is "pure and utter bloody brilliance" and she's not proved wrong at The Stables..."

Filed in Kirsty Almeida, Live Reviews | Date: 30 June 10 at The Stables, Milton Keynes | By Amy Rich
It’s official. Kirsty Almeida and band are pure and utter bloody brilliance. So brilliant, in fact, that not even a gig in Milton Keynes could put a dampener on proceedings.??Fresh from playing Glastonbury, Kirsty and her band (usually seven, but five tonight) brought sunlight into the dimly-lit room of Stage 2 at The Stables. And blimey, were they good: vocals dripping in honey, melodies that mixed blues, country, and soul, and a band that can really play, made for a mesmerizing, inspiring gig.??Looks-wise, Kirsty has rather a lot of the bohemian hippy about her – long, floaty dress, hair piled up on her head, and props of twisted necklaces and shells to create twinkly sounds. And, it has to be said, there’s something a little Amy Winehouse about her – perhaps it’s the hair, or the buttery bluesy voice she sings with. Either way, that’s where the comparison ends, because Kirsty is too much of a character to ever be lost under the radar of someone else.??At one point during the gig, Kirsty told the audience how she nearly gave up all her musical ambitions to study marine biology in Hawaii. She asked whether she was there yet. Someone responded, “No, but Milton Keynes is better.” Doubtful, but for a brief spell it was, because the music was here and the tunes were heavenly.??Highlights included ‘Butterfly’ - an achingly beautiful melody that tugs at even the most rigid of heartstrings, ‘Late At Night’ – a country-esque tune topped off with an addictive whistle, and ‘Walk Away’ a first-play exclusive. But it was ‘Shine All Your Light’ with its steel drum sound and uplifting, lilting lyrics that shone the most.??Kirsty’s debut album Pure Blue Green will be released late August – and we can’t wait.
- The Artrocker


"Kirsty Almeida - Pure Blue Green"

Pure Blue Green is the stunning debut album from one of the UK's finest singers and eccentric entertainers, Kirsty Almeida.
Hot on the heels of Almeida's recent single release, Spider, Pure Blue Green is a full length glimpse into the wonder and sublime genius of one of the industry's latest talent discoveries.
With the whimsical and old time radio styled minute long intro of Gather Round starting the record off, the album demonstrates a pure gem right from the very first note. If You Can't Make Me Happy is a boppy number with a slight folkish feel to it surrounded by Almeida's signiture circus sound. The song slows down in its centre to focus on Almeida's RnB vocal textures before lifting off into another round of catchy chorus lines.
The album highlight and the records first single, Spider, takes over from this point and this is a brilliant track for the rising star who shows a fine strength in storytelling. Its 70's rhythm and ?the hollering 'na-na-na's of the chorus add a heavy flow of charm and vintage class to Spider making it one heck of a lead single for Almeida.
Pure Blue Green continues to display an array of versatility with the down tempo swoonings of Cool Down Rewind. A number that is as raw as it is carefree, it's a track with a delicate string arrangement laced through a faultless melody combining triangles, acoustic guitar and gentle piano tickerings.
Gliding further through the album we get ushered along by some truly bold baladry in the form of Scares Me. A exemplary addition to Pure Blue Green, the number adds a big band sound to the structure of what is a remarkable and well conceieved track. Haunting backing vocals along with a note held to an impressive length and an epic delivery make this one another standout on the record.
Butterflies slows the pulse down with a song that sounds like it could have easily been written by Sade or Carole King. Strings are the order of the day in this track which showcases the singer overtaken by vulnerability and a gorgeous use of layered textures.
The album is also given a very toned down and Amy Winehouse style slow version of If You Cant Make Me Happy ending the record on a perfectly elevated note.
To catagorise Pure Blue Green or its conceiver into a specific genre would prove to be a failing effort. The album covers all bases, swinging from pop and Americana through to jazz, blues and 70's big band power ballads within its 55 minute lifespan that, without the slightest ounce of doubt, is one if the best debuts I have heard in a very long time.
Kirsty Almeida has the voice, the style and the authentic prowess to write some truly oustanding and lavish genre bending musical gems that will see this leading lady of british ecclecticism climbing the charts with a release that well deserves to rule the UK chart roost.
- Entertainment Focus


"Kirsty Almeida Pure Blue Green (Decca) **** (4 stars out of 5)"

Kirsty Almeida
Pure Blue Green (Decca)
**** (4 stars out of 5)

I’m a collector of ‘tingle factor’ moments – those utterly great bits of songs which make you smile or sigh every time you hear them. And there’s the mother of all tingle factors on Kirsty Almeida’s stunning debut album, when at the end of Scares Me, she holds a note for 15 seconds as a brass arrangement bold enough for a Bond theme thunders beneath her. That she goes from this, worthy of Shirley Bassey’s titanic tonsils, to a song, Butterflies, which is gentle enough for Corrine Bailey Rae’s more contemplative moods, is evidence itself of the gobsmaking range of a new artist we can claim as one of our own. An adopted Manc, Almeida worked with Latin band La Gran Descarga for three years before writing her own album. That writing is extraordinarily sophisticated, drawing on Latin and jazzy influences, but also folk and blues, to create something classy but timeless. Brass, harp and strings abound. If You Can’t Make Me Happy, for instance, is like a three act drama going from bouncy acoustic pop to cooing balladry and back again. Spider shows Almeida’s soulful chops, building from a spindly electric piano riff into an anthemic brass-laden churn. The variety of musical moods, the understated intelligence of the writing and the pure joy of the execution make this, surely, one of 2010’s exceptional debuts.

Paul Taylor
- Manchester Evening News


"In every aspect of her creative and colourful life, this musical dynamo blazes her own trail"

Interview: Kirsty Almeida
In every aspect of her creative and colourful life, this musical dynamo blazes her own trail.
Written by Cari Steel
There is nothing generic about Kirsty Almeida; she was not artificially created from a record labels wish-list, nor manufactured during an X Factor audition. Navigating her own path, she is very much the modern Renaissance Woman: artist, experimenter and a true creative. Before meeting Kirsty to chat about her new album Pure Blue Green – a rich tapestry of blues, folk and jazzy pop – I watched video clips of her performances. Singing live, she is mesmerizing, a powerhouse! Free spirited and alive, at times she is an enigmatic chanteuse, and other times she is a ringleader to a raucous vaudeville troupe. She sings with a passion that leaves us in no doubt that her music come from an honest and heartfelt place. Her voice is tender with sparkles of underlying inquisitiveness and humour and it only takes a minutes listening to see that her life, thoughts and loves are entwined within her lyrics, revealing an existence lived to the full and one that is continuously questioned. So it comes as no surprise that our conversation becomes an all-encompassing discourse that occasionally touches on her album and then soars off in the direction of magic, art, self-development, women’s rights and the dubious ethics of the music industry….
I love how visual your shows are…..?I love the big show thing, I think that people want to be entertained; because music is so accessible, and more downloadable now, people really like going out to live shows. I like to do something thats entertaining, but I also love the little live acoustic shows, those are some of my favourite gigs to do. I’m doing a gig soon that will be just me with a guitar and a girl called Lucinda Bell on harp. I’ve had a six foot bird cage designed and built for me, and we’re going to do a series of exhibitions and art galleries where I will play sat in the cage that will be suspended from the ceiling!
There is a lot of creativity in your performance…?Truthfully I am a visual artist, so I can’t help but look at things and go “well if you just stuck a massive big flower there, and that was attached to an umbrella with a bath chain and then water came out of it…. ” (laughs) and thats just how my mind works; it’s really visual and my work is really visual, I can’t help it!
What do you see first??When I’m writing a song, I always see colours. I see music in colours and textures. so the first thing that will happen will be that I will be playing guitar and then the colours will come together and at that point I will know that it’s right and then I just have to close my eyes and wait and then the lyrics come.
So the song arrives together??Always!
Do the visuals come at the same time??No, when I write, it is just about the song and being a channel of creativity. I try and let the song happen, and then afterwards when it’s on loop I get the visuals.
Where does your inspiration come from??I’m inspired by a day, every day there is a million things that inspire me. I’m inspired by clothes, people, situations, conversations that I hear from other people, situations that I get into, trouble, butterflies, birds, nature, trees….. everything!
Do you paint??Yeah, I paint a lot. But, (sighs) there is never enough time. I also run a collective called Odbod. I set it up in Manchester where there’s a very strong support network of artists, musicians and composers who work together but because you don’t normally get paid to do original music, you have to call in a lot of favours, and in the Manchester scene there are a LOT of favours, people calling each other all the time and helping each other out on each others projects, but there is no set network so there is no way of getting funding or help and I realised that a lot of the artists needed support and advice and people were coming to me for advice, so I thought if we had a collective, we can all get together and say to each other, ‘what do you need, how can I help?’
It’s a genius idea! Would you consider expanding the Odbod’s collective to London??I would love to! It’s hard to contain it, there are so many people who want to be involved and to everyone who wants to get involved, I just say, come along, support us and we will support you. Hopefully none of the Odbods will be there in a year, they will have flown the nest and it will be time for the next lot of artists to come in. I’m also managing an Irish singer called Rioghnach Connolly, she’s amazing, that girl blows my mind! I’ve watched her and given her advice along the way; I’m quite good at keeping peoples motivation up and helping them to see where they are messing up, and where they are putting in energy where they don’t need to be putting energy in. The whole psychology of being an artist is quite self destructive and I really recognize that so I’m good at pulling someone out.
Do you have that self destructive side to - Amelia Magazine


Discography

Spider (single) Decca 2010
Pickled Spider (single) Ninja Tunes 2010
Pure Blue Green (album) Decca 2010
Pategonia film (6 soundtrack songs) Verve Pictures 2011
Albatross film (2 soundtrack songs) CinemaNX 2011

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Bio

"...a gorgeous collection of brilliantly written and performed songs...add to that a voice that is by turns delicate and storming, personality that seeps out of every seam and you have an artist and an album to treasure. Delicious."
The Daily Express

Kirsty Almeida’s music (like her life) is magical, the kind of radiant soul-revue sophistication that’s been gone so long it suddenly feels brand new; crystalline vocals untouched by meddling sheen, live instrumentation tinkling across your synapses, the glowing warmth of classic song-writing pulsing like amber jewels. Her debut album, ‘Pure Blue Green” is a timeless spectrum of soul, folk, blues and sumptuously intricate voodoo pop beamed through the prism of her gifted seven-piece band. Signed to the legendary Decca label in the summer of 2009, ‘Pure Blue Green’ was produced by the mythological Youth. The result, is sublime, gracious, lusciously melancholy and inspirationally uplifting.

"The variety of musical moods, the understated intelligence of the writing and the pure joy of the execution make this, surely, one of 2010 exceptional debuts."
Paul Taylor, Manchester Evening News

Born in the UK, brought up in Gibraltar, she traveled the world as a kid (Venezuela, Singapore, Florida, the Philippines, amongst others). “Music was the only place that felt like home, always.” She’d also been painting, sculpting and crafting forever, using these talents to create the artwork for her album. She also, naturally, finds colours in chords and blends them together exactly as a painter would.

2010 saw Kirsty and her band The Troubadours playing all the major UK music festivals as well as a headline tour.

“…she's an artist who has to be seen live to be appreciated…it's on stage, with her band in full bawdy flow and the birdcage juddering, that she flourishes.” – The Guardian

"…Almeida's live shows where a cabaret-meets-soul-revue atmosphere of energy, color and good vibes is summoned by a taut seven piece band swinging big and forceful one minute, sweet and tender the next. Highly recommended." Direct Current

Kirsty was also commissioned to write and record tracks for two independent British films “Pategonia” and “Albatross”. Her collaboration with fellow Mancunian resident Mr Scruff resulted in a hugely successful remix - “Pickled Spider” which was released on the Ninja Tunes label.

Kirsty’s single “Late At Night” will be released early in 2011.