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This Manchester duo, comprised of vocalist Louise Rhodes and drummer/sampler Andy Barlow, met in 1993 and formulated a future be-bop sound that blends lusty jazz overtones with untempered drumbeats. Their self-titled debut album, a Fontana release, displays Rhodes' torch song harmonies melodically striking the electronic pulses of Barlow's sampled drumbeats. While performing live, they are joined by a string quartet, which gives their music a feathered quality, much like Portishead or Attica Blues.
Rhodes, a former photographer for the U.K. music press, grew up singing hippie folk songs. However, she decided early on that she desired a different musical texture and began searching for a producer that would mix her soul and hip-hop fragments into be-bop. Barlow had just moved to Manchester after living in Philadelphia for three years. It was there that his interest in dance music escalated and he began his career as a D.J., spinning at local clubs. Rhodes sought him out and asked him to produce for her. Rhodes' throaty lyrics collided with Barlow's thumping techno beats, and Lamb was born.
Andy's first experience with drums was around the age of nine in a marching band, and from then on, rhythm was a passion. Teenage years spend in Philadelphia compounded his love of hip-hop beats and returning to Britain during the second "Summer Of Love" added to a techno tinge to the equation. In 1993 he arrived in Manchester for a sound engineering course but soon found himself frustrated by the confines that a formal technical education place don his creativity. A year later he was offered a job in a Manchester studio and found his que to move on.
Vocalist Louise Rhodes grew up singing, breast-fed on hippie singer songwriters at her mother's knee. "My mum was a folk singer," she explains, "so from an early age I was going to clubs and festivals with her and getting up to sing too." However, her musical career didn't follow the path laid out by these early beginnings. Rhodes found herself drawn towards hip hop and soul, but was uncomfortable setting her songs in these contexts, so she took a step sideways into music and fashion photography.
Music has to move on and embrace new forms.Lyrics of love and loss meet with untempered beats, drum and bass courts with jazz and lust to produce a form of "future bebop." This is music where conflicting forms battle and find a greater peace.
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Discography
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Year
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Label
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Title
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1997 |
Fontana/Mercury
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Lamb
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1999 |
Mercury-IDJMG
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Fear of Fours
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