aaamusic | On 09, Dec 2010

Caro Snatch releases her new album ‘Til You’re No Longer Blinkered’

Caro creates her own brand of sound, toying with musical conventions and intertwining elements from avant-garde, electronic, classical, spoken word and pop worlds.  This brave new release – in terms of both engineering and creativity – opens with a 7-minute piano, soprano, electronics & string epic supporting a lyrical story about an incredibly generous mountain.

The journey continues with an account of a shipwreck’s restoration immersed in a seascape of found sounds, junk drumkit, saws and marimba. The album concludes with an untamed intuitive lullaby with layered voices, vocal beats and guitar & piano textures. Caro’s distinctive lead vocal is intimate throughout this meticulously crafted story. The remix coda includes appropriately sensitive treatments of Newcastle songstress Beccy Owen and Vienna-based electro producer Frau Aike.

Some 20 artists selected from Caro’s networks in Manchester, UK & Germany have given their time and efforts to make this album all the more musical and massive. From mezzo Soprano Jenny Kosmowsky to Daniel Weaver on saws, Strict Status on marimba, Andy Hodson (The Matinee Orchestra/Warm Digits) on drums and Bandit Queen bassist Janet Wolstenholme.  After months of bed-bound laptop beavering, final production was carried out with Steve Boyce-Buckley at Lisa Stansfield’s deliciously equipped Gracieland Studios in Rochdale with the final mixdown going to tape.

Caro’s music has an urgency that is partly due to living with isolating chronic pain.  She only embarked on music thanks to being laid up for a few years at the age of 25 whilst living in a vintage double-decker bus, which featured in John Peel’s Sound of Suburbs Channel 4 series.

Never one to rest on laurels, Caro has made leaps and bounds since her live debut in Newcastle Upon Tyne in Oct 2003.  She was soon dubbed “Tyneside’s first lady of electronica” (The Crack Magazine), headlining Generator and Distraction Records events and playing alongside local peers such as Cathode, The Matinee Orchestra, Cath & Phil Tyler and Jazzfinger as well as supporting international visitors such as EU and Mrs Pilgrim and featuring in a BBC Radio 2 fringe event.  Comparisons soon accumulated such as Bjork, Laurie Anderson, Boards of Canada, Leila and Stockhausen.

An Arts Council-sponsored spell in electronic mecca Berlin resulted in self-released debut album “Es Muss Sein” (Phonector, 2006) and self-managed European Tour touching Barcelona, Paris, Stockholm, Vienna and a few cities in Germany & UK – sharing line-ups with legendary electronic ladies such as Gudrun Gut, Chicks On Speed and Andrea Parker.  Debut album radio play spanned across Europe and UK including Tom Robinson’s BBC Introducing and album track “Say Trees” featured on Chicks On Speed’s Girl Monster compilation. Inspired by the album and a feature film soundtrack production process, Caro relocated to Manchester in 2007 to mistress sound engineering at School Of Sound Recording. As an engineer she has worked at Blueprint Studios, Gracieland and Airtight Studios as well as recording Manchester Town Hall’s bells for Elbow. On hitting Manchester, she won a competition to support Bat For Lashes at Manchester International Festival, has shared stages with local legends Denis Jones, Sisters Of Transistors and Seaming and appears regularly at the city’s flagship Futureeverything festival.  As artist in residency at Manchester’s internationally acclaimed Contact Theatre in 2009 resulted in found sound experiments that feature on the album and an invitation to stage a special album production has been set in motion for 2011.