Chinawoman

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Vineri 21 februarie la Why?Not: Chinawoman

Tickets: limited no – www.rockevents.ro.

Third time in Romania on our special request, since opening Bucharest Biennale 5 in May 2012. Chinawoman’s songs “manoeuvre between grandiose retro motifs and a surprising sincerity” (music.com.ua) — are tragicomic, melody-driven, sentimental and exist suspended in a shadowy glamour.

The 2011 Seeking Russian Bride Tour was followed by supporting Patrick Wolf’s European dates, and found her listenership expanding west with dates in Austria, France, Switzerland and The Netherlands. Her move to Berlin marked a major turning point for Chinawoman as a live act, from playing smaller shows in Toronto to having her 2nd European solo show being sold-out to a crowd of more then 800 people.

CHINAWOMAN
“Well, the aim at least, is a feeling for life, at once sad and celebratory. A recognition of this moment together, you and I, drinking at this table, our feeling for one another, conflicted and imperfect, gorgeous and f—king tragic! … I mean, I do have to go out into the world, make myself somewhat presentable, use more or less decipherable words and facial expressions to connect with others. You meet and greet using intricate code, eyes, words, hair and accessories, then hopefully you can run off into the woods together, get to know each other for real, eat without cutlery, etc.” (from an interview of CHINAWOMAN in 2010)

Chinawoman is Michelle Gurevich, a Toronto-born musician with Russian roots who moved to Berlin nearly two years ago. Raised in the Russian hood of Toronto, the daughter of a Kirov ballerina and an engineer from Leningrad grew up listening to her parentsʼ collection of Soviet and 70ʼs European records.

RECORDINGS
Her debut album, Party Girl (2007), by some fateful unknown hand was delivered to the land of her forefathers, and her music can now be heard blaring regularly from the yachts of Russian billionaires, elitist Lithuanian tea parties, Moscow fashion runways and the ringtones of mothers all over the Ukraine.

Her second album Show Me The Face (2010), indulged towards classical European balladry, making clear the foundations of her style. Decadent, dramatic and earnest, melodies remain simple but precise, vintage keyboards and synth strings offer the solitary rendition of a grand experience, and the voice always upfront delivers motifs familiar yet impossible to pinpoint from the great soup of European chanson. A genre based partly on elements of melody and style, but moreso, a signature fatalist-celebratory approach to songwriting.

Chinawoman’s latest offering, To Be With Others (2012), marks her first release since her move from Toronto to Berlin, and presents a sultry and fresh listenability to the emotional and matter- of-fact style established in her two full-length albums. The minimal Cohen-esque precision is carried by a deep subterranean beat, dark synths, and like all her former material, was written and recorded by Chinawoman at home.

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