“I make tunes,” new producer Lif3blood states on his / her Twitter bio. That’s all they’re giving away about themselves. They could be a purple three footed alien from outer space and we wouldn’t know.
However, there’s a more open and human side to his / her / its debut, a rework of The Korgi’s top 5 hit Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime, in the form of singer Kate Miller, who cropped up a couple of times on the blog in 2014 prior to releasing her debut EP Neophyte. This track, a balearic house production, is somewhat different to Kate’s solo offerings, but it'll make you realise that its 'song of the summer' time and nearly every music writer in the UK will be rolling that cliché out some point in the next month or so if they haven't done so already. Oh, looks like we just did it right there. Next you'll possibly find us jumping into the swimming pool whilst shouting TUNE very loudly indeed.
Lif3blood wasn't wrong with that Twitter bio. He / she /it should have just put the word tunes in capital letters.
Lif3blood - Like The Sunshine ft Kate Miller
Back in February we introduced Kate Miller to readers of Breaking More Waves and stated that a debut EP would be released later in the year. Now signs of that EP are beginning to surface. First up from it comes Fortify and the accompanying video which streams below.
On Fortify, rather like the previously streamed Collar Up it sounds as if Kate isn’t trying too hard vocally; there’s no X-Factor style warbling or histrionics to be found and frankly the tune is all the better for it. Her understated tones have a glowing sensual presence, the opening line of ‘tonight I’m gonna face the sun’ being a perfect description of how she sings; with a warmth and mellowness that its easy to drift away with.
The video takes clips of performance artists such as Bruce Nauman as well as Anne Teresa De Keersmaekers’s choreographed dance Fase. The choice of these videos comes from Kate’s obsession with performance art. “I wanted to address visually what I felt about the songs on my EP, going through obsessions, being besotted with a subject or person, and repetition,” she says.
Kate Miller - Fortify (Video)
Imagine you were a record company type and were looking for the dreaded ‘next big thing’. Then imagine that whilst you were looking we came along and told you that we had another one of those big-lunged British female singers who had one song that sounded like a subtler soulful version of Florence & The Machine and another one that was a tiny bit like Banks, with a few Bastille like ‘oh-oh’s’ on it. Then we’d mention that this artist has also recorded a version of Keane’s Everybody’s Changing that is far stronger than Lily Allen’s wet blanket of a version released for that John Lewis advert (and sounds quite Christmas-like to boot). We’d probably also tell you that her two original songs have a brooding pop magnificence and that the artist in question names the likes of maverick lady Tracey Emin and Greek painter, performance artist and sculptor Jannis Kounellis as inspirations.
You’d probably be pretty excited wouldn’t you? You might even sign her right away. Ok, you'd probably take a listen to the songs first, but after that you would be convinced.
Well here she is. Her name is Kate Miller. We quite like the fact she's called Kate Miller, because it's a nice straightforward name rather than one of these artist nom de plume's that seem to be all the rage these days, from Lana Del Rey to Lorde. She’s 19 years old, and has been working with the likes of Julian Emery (who has written for Lissie and McFly) and Ed Harcourt (if you haven't heard Ed's recent work with Sophie Ellis Bextor you're missing a lovely treat) and is due to release a yet-to-be titled debut EP later this year. Is it too early to start talking about Ones to Watch for 2015?
Answer = no.
Probably.
Hear one of her original songs below or both here.
Kate Miller - Collar Up
Kate Miller - Everybody's Changing (You Tube Stream)
