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CD Review: "MA Across The City And Into Your Room"
By Manisha Kanetkar
November 21 2007
The debut album from Sydney-based MA is a soulful blend of classy electro-acoustic grooves that channels the sweet-raw-layered beats of Portishead. We listen in…
MA is vocalist Victoria White and composer / programmer / editor / arranger Drew Crawford. Weaving together a range of string, drum, sax and guitar samples with Victoria's pure vocals, the album takes you on a journey through playful pop, whimsical narrative, internal reflection and the melancholy.
When we first listened to the tracks, we couldn't help but be reminded of Beth Gibbons' sweet-yet-serious vocals on top of the sampled backing in Portishead's classic album: Dummy. White's vocals have that beautiful quality of a real mix of purity and power, and she is well matched with the atmospheric, textured, electro-acoustic arrangements of Crawford.
We loved the down-tempo honesty of this album; this is dimly-lit room, martini-in-hand sounds at their best. Sink back into your seat and enjoy.
About Victoria:
"When she came on stage and sang her first note - I felt that rare tingle down my spine"
- JAYBIRD
"You can hear it! Aretha meets Bjork teetering on the edge of new world groove"
- Revolver
"A beautiful, pure voice"
- Triple J's Artery
"Victoria White came on stage and gave me goosebumps. She plays the song seductress, providing syrupy, raspy sweet vocals on Thrill Popper"
- In the Mix Live At The Basement
About Drew:
"Back in Sydney, Drew Crawford floats somewhere between two worlds, writing for popular cabaret shows and also more so-called serious concert works. The influence of popular culture is all-pervasive in Crawford’s work, but not always in an overt sense. For example, his new string quartet, composed in memory of Jeff Buckley, takes as much from Sculthorpe’s Mangrove in its textural sympathies as it does from the pop music world. As something of an Australian Kurt Weill … Crawford is somewhat caught between the world of pop (as in his music theatre work Why Are Our Porn-Stars Killing Themselves?) and concert music. Like Weill, we seem to find him difficult to pigeon-hole, which seems to underline a lack of flexibility in the new music world, rather than any particular fault by Crawford himself, who is an important talent and ought to be recognised as such."
- New Music: Now! Young composers, their work and ideas by Paul Stanhope
Reviewed by Harriet Cunningham
October 1 2002
The Studio, September 28
One of the biggest frustrations with concerts of new music is the presentation, or lack thereof. Whether it's due to lack of funds or imagination, historically a new music concert tends to feature black-clad musicians shuffling on and off a stage in a venue which is either too hot, too cold, too noisy or all three.
So it is a delight to attend a show where the seats are comfy, the sound system works, the lighting is well focused and the performers are engaging. All that, and the music was great too.
Lounge Music, a sampler of music for dance, theatre and cabaret by composer Drew Crawford and his colleagues and mentors, was an intentionally relaxed affair. The music, presented in a manner free of fusty concert hall convention, was by turns atmospheric, moody and in-your-face.
Crawford's various theatre works, generally subtitled "Beautiful music", often used relatively simple building blocks and undemonstrative improvisation to create background music which, in these brief interludes, rewarded closer listening.
Two of the three set pieces, Quadrivium One and Confiteor Deo, revealed Crawford's classical roots, the former using layered marimba riffs to create harmonics which hung in the air, taking over from original percussive sounds, and the latter weaving a solemn dance for the six voices of the Song Company in a work recalling Ross Edwards's Dance Mantras, performed earlier in the program.
The third set piece was from the other end of Crawford's stylistic spectrum: a show-stopping setting of My Mistress' Eyes for Bell Shakespeare's production of The Taming of the Shrew, performed in boy-band-meets-Meatloaf style by Tim Richards, Stephen Pease and Matt Passmore.
With their dry ice and slick moves came an indication they might upstage the show's centrepiece, Michelle Morgan. However, she was more than a match for three men.
Performing her own compositions and works written in collaboration with Crawford, she used her versatile voice, sassy lyrics and excellent backing band to steal the show. Sea of Glass was, for me, the most successful and substantial work on the program, musically and dramatically, with Morgan by turns strong and wistful, and a bracket of songs from Crawford's musical Why Are Our Porn Stars Killing Themselves? left the audience wanting more.