Currently fronting Groove Armada on tour, after co-writing tracks on their latest album ‘Black Light’, Saint Saviour, aka Becky Jones, is also a solo artist in her own right – her 2008 debut single being one of the finest covers of Joy Division’s much-covered ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ you are ever likely to hear.
She has a new single called ‘Woman Scorned’ out in October via Euphonios, and before that will play the new music night GustoGig in support of The Louis Blouin Foundation on 26 Aug. With all that upcoming, we tracked down Becky to ask the Same Six Questions.
Q1 How did you start out making music?
I very naively started out wanting to be a session singer and after a long musical education I made my money doing the working men’s club/cabaret circuit, believe it or not, and singing in studios for other people. I joined someone else’s band and they encouraged me to write my own music, gave me a keyboard, I got a copy of Logic and I was off!
Q2 What inspired your latest album?
After a few years of making upbeat, loud, pumping dance music and electro-pop, I wanted to go back to my roots when I only listened to sensitive and often melancholy souls like Gladys Knight and Carole King. My voice has a really emotional quality and I wanted to strip back the layers of noise and reveal it in a more natural way. The odd synth bass and fat kick sample manages to pop in now and again though because I just can’t resist, but I no longer disguise my voice under three effect units!
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
I’m sure everyone says this, but it’s different every time. I wrote my last song using Ableton on my laptop on a tour bus careering through the Austrian countryside, and the one before that began with a hangover induced low mood piano playing session in my room. I take a lot of inspiration from rhythms and grooves, so I do a lot of messing about with synths on my laptop. I usually write the whole song including drums, bass and guitar parts, then hand it to some musicians to record properly for me. I record vocals at home because I like to control it myself.
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
This is the hardest question ever because I just love music in general. I guess mostly things I grew up listening to will always seep into my music in a subliminal way, so I’d definitely say Gladys and Carol as above, but I got smashed round the head by a lot of blues, rock and folk from my parents, so early Fleetwood Mac, Janis, Jimmy, Led Zep, Deep Purple, Melanie, Dylan, and then in recent years a lot of electronic artists, The Knife and Fever Ray, Röyksopp, Trentemøller, Björk etc.
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
Listen to this!
Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
I want to play on ‘Jools Holland’.
MORE>> www.myspace.com/oursaintsaviour
Sections: Q&A S | Tags: Saint Saviour
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