Kitty Liv has fired up music lovers around the globe from a very early age, co-fronting family band ‘Kitty, Daisy & Lewis’ selling over a quarter of a million records. The band toured the world numerous times, gaining fans by the likes of Amy Winehouse, Mark Ronson and Coldplay. She is now gearing up to storm an even broader fan base with a solo album project that marks a completely different direction for her.

As a songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist, Kitty is resonating with a more expansive set of her influences, from Erykah Badu and D’Angelo to Al Green and blues legend Howlin’ Wolf, to produce a body of personal songs that evoke the primal depths of Soul, Gospel blues & Rock and Roll. There's a deeper vocal riding over the songs, almost channeling her demons. Kitty has been developing her ideas over several years and is currently capturing some stunning performances in the studio.

Born and bred in Camden Town, Kitty lives and breathes music, founding Durham Sound Studios and collaborating with other musicians and artists, to capture magical moments on sparkling analogue recordingE gear. When someone has been playing music, recording and writing from the age of seven, it’s only a matter of time before they take a quantum leap into a new paradigm.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Kitty Liv's 'Easy Tiger' follows on from her huge success in Kitty, Daisy & Lewis with an album that swims with soul and melody, landing somewhere between Bluegrass and lounge music. It's perfectly paced throughout, with build-up of tension and huge crescentic builds fading into brittle country ballads and tender campfire folk.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sweet Dreams
2. Neck On The Line
3. Comin' Up
4. Nothing On My Mind (But You Babe)
5. The River That Flows
6. The Sun And The Rain
7. The Doctor
8. Lately
9. Passing You By
10. Keep Your Head Up High

French lullabies and traditional folk songs dating as far back as the 14th century, adapted with contemporary arrangements and faint tape manipulations in Dublin, Ireland.

Imagine Serge Gainsbourg, John Martyn and Gábor Szabó squeezed on a small stage in the early hours of a smokey backstreet Parisian jazz club, slowly hypnotising the audience into hypnagogic hallucinations.

Growing up, Kevin Fowley split his time between living in France and Ireland. He listened to French lullabies sung by his mother in one room, while his father would be playing Donegal tunes on the fiddle in another. “I’m lucky to have been brought up bilingual and bicultural,” he says. “What I find interesting is that I usually think in English, but if I intentionally start thinking in French, a markedly different side of my personality comes through, encouraging different thought patterns.”

And this is apparent on his beautiful record of French lullabies À Feu Doux, which encompasses musical elements from both worlds, as it seamlessly glides across folk, jazz, and a rich yet shimmering in between sound. Varnished and exposed is the feeling that floats through À Feu Doux like a gentle gust of wind creeping in through the open window at night. Real night time music. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1.Ne Pleure Pas, Jeannette (6.50)
2. Á La Claire Fontaine (9.53)

Side B
3. Le Coq Est Mort (2.42)
4. Aux Marches Du Palais (5.20)

TMTCH stumbled into existence onstage at the Alternative Country Festival, Electric Ballroom, Camden on Easter Sunday in 1984; after a long afternoon busking and drinking in a Hammersmith subway. They knew three chords and a hundred songs all of which sounded a bit the same, a frenzied skiffle that was exciting to jump around and drink snakebite to. If they thought about longevity at all, a lifespan of 40 days seemed most likely. It’s forty years later and they are still running. Since those early days, and without much of a game plan other than always stepping onward, TMTCH have released around 20 albums plus many side projects, bootlegs, curios and an unknown number of T shirts. They’ve toured constantly, whether in dingy pub backrooms or Grand Ballrooms and Festival Stages. From Cairo to Reykjavik and all points in between, the TMTCH roadshow has shambled and thrilled through the decades, always passionate, always literate, occasionally dishevelled.

Forty years of recording has spawned a vast back catalogue, well represented here by songs from each album, style and era; a tapestry of human stories and vibrant characters. So there are the fast sprints like early folk hoedown ‘Ironmasters’, the frantic shanty ‘Raising Hell’ and the amphetamine punk blues of ‘Going Back to Coventry’. Then there are the waltzing folk ballads, from their impassioned version of the anti war standard ‘Green Fields Of France’ to the bitter regret of ‘The Bells’ and the righteous testimony of ‘Our Day’. Elsewhere there are anthems galore; ‘The Crest’ a swirling gaelic chant, ‘Rosettes’, a fast marching assault of drums, fiddles and mandolins; historical epics such as ‘Ghosts Of Cable Street’, ‘Shirt of Blue’ and ‘The Colours’; romantic ballads like the wistful ‘Parted From You’ and ‘Island in The Rain’.

All the eras are here; from the wiry lo fi of the first album, through the eighties into full blown MTV ready multi trackers with vast charging drums; the initial simplicity of their recipe deepening and darkening. And then on through the nineties, noughties and tens; always the double pronged vocals drifting between harmony and unison, always the celtic, folk and country tones vying for attention, the emotive fiddle, the top end mandolin above the thundering rhythm section. On through bouffant hair, spiky hair, dyed hair, thin hair and hats; on through Grunge, Baggy, Madchester, Rave, Britpop. On through the Miner’s Strike, Poll Tax, New Labour, Iraq and Brexit. On through marriage, children, loss and revival. Forty years at the working end of rock and roll is a feat achieved by very few bands. It requires tremendous chemistry, a deep catalogue; both panoramic and miniature, a vital and irrepressible energy, all of which is on resplendent display in this sprawling 3 disc compilation. But most of all it requires an intense resilience, something that TMTCH possess in spades. Forty years on the run; was ever a band so aptly named? 

TRACK LISTING

Ghosts Of Cable Street
The Eye
Wishing Well
Raising Hell
Bounty Hunter
Going Back To Coventry
Sirens
Nightbird
Shirt Of Blue
A Place In The Sun
Island In The Rain
Singing Elvis
The Lion And The Unicorn
Smugglers
Gold Rush
Night Ferry
The Crest
Rain, Steam And Speed
Our Day
King Street Serenade
Beast Of Brechfa
Kingdom Of The Blind
Rivertown
Great Expectations
Company Town
Devil On The Wind
Red Rocks Of Spain
Scavengers
Overseas
Rosettes
The Bells
Billy Morgan
A Map Of Morocco
The Colours
Parted From You
Green Fields Of France
Ironmasters
Walkin’ Talkin’
A Night To Remember
Red Kite Rising