pomfob wrote:
Anne de Balbi was singer for brutal hardcore thrash punks On the Spot in the mid 1990s. Following an abrupt split with the band mid-tour on the Swiss-Italian border, she disappeared for several years, re-emerging with her solo record, Highland Mountains. Inspired by an extended walking tour of Europe, it was mainly acoustic, largely instrumental and entirely perplexing. Opening track, 2010 Pan American Men's Youth Handball Championship, clocked in at 47 seconds and harked back to her previous band’s output, but from then on, the pieces progressively shed her old skin, till the closing number, Melania Grego, was little more than a conversation with the eponymous water polo player by a crackling campfire, accompanied by a barely-there balalaika.
De Balbi has since gone on to make 7 deeply contradictory solo records, along with 3 LPs with On The Spot, who reformed, then split, then reformed and split again in the space of 6 months.
Whereabouts currently unknown, last seen outside Tesco Metro in Rhyl.
Wow, you raised the bar significantly there with the biographical section. Think I need another go. I mean 12 years on I still consider Fábio Barreto's "Elphinstone" a lost classic, though can't say I've actually listened to it in years and don't know much about him, so let's see....
Yep, would probably buy this one, too.
Pyotr Slovtsov - Montreal MetroGuerrilla gardening
Kuppanawadi
Troms Folkeblad
Tornado (film)
Collage
Miss Idaho's Outstanding Teen
Esteri Tebandeke
New Jersey Route 495
LK II
Archaeology Today
Pyotr Ivanovich Slovtsov (30 June 1886 – 24 February 1934) was, of course, a famous Russian tenor. Though as multi-instrumentalist and AV artist Alice Edwards surmises, probably not that famous in the village just outside Aberystwyth where she grew up making DIY films and sound effects with her twin brother Alun. Studying electronics at Sheffield University, Alun was turned on to the emerging algo-rave movement via 65daysofstatic's Millennium Gallery sessions and started making his own computer-driven sounds, though it wasn't until he sent some samples to his sister, which she returned a few weeks later augmented with her classical-inspired flute playing, snatches of the village church organ, and fluid, dream-like film work, that Pyotr Slovtsov the band started to take shape. Drafting in Brazilian drummer Andressa Alves da Silva from the recently defunct math-rock / free jazz experimentalists John Of Viktring the duo became a trio, performing their first live set at Bristol's Pope Ladies Festival of female and non-binary led experimental music where the Quietus had a massive wank over them. As for any confusion surrounding their choice of name, selected from a magazine left in the twins' father's dental surgery, Alice just laughs. "It's not like anyone's going to pick up a Franz Ferdinand album and think it's an actual dead archduke, is it?"
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Bonus wikis: Andressa Alves da Silva is an attacking midfielder in FC Barcelona's women's team, John Of Viktring was a late medieval chronicler and political advisor to Duke Henry of Carinthia, Pope ladies are yeast-based buns unique to the city of St. Albans (????????????!!) and this game is fucking fantastic :)