LATEST NEWS.
Alex has a new download single called Light Years . available 18th October . remixed by Jim Eliot (Kylie Minogue, Will Young, Kish Mauve) . Light Years was played on the Dermot O'Leary show, Radio 2, Sat 25th Sept and 9th Oct.
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/light-years/id398373138
Brand new album 'A IS FOR.' out now on I-Tunes and many other download sites.
Cds available from www.alexvalentine.com and CD Baby.
Alex is confirmed to play this years Hay Festival - Fri 28th, 8pm.
A SHORT ALBUM ABOUT LOVE, TARDIS HEART and LOCAL HISTORY now available from I-Tunes!
'A SHORT ALBUM ABOUT LOVE' . Time is precious, now more than ever. With this in mind Struck Dumb Records brings you ‘A Short Album About Love’ by Alex Valentine. This is a record of tautly written grown up folkish pop songs, arranged with a minimum of fuss and performed with a great deal of heart.
‘The voice of an angel, the lyrical talent of Paul Simon and the ability to reduce audiences to tears’
Mariella Frostrop Sky Arts.
I released my first full length album, Local History, in 2004 with a single 'Sunshine' in 2005. I got lucky and had much daytime airplay on U.K national radio which was a big help! Next came 'Tardis Heart', a collection of twelve songs, more folky than the first LP and generally mellower. it sounds a little bit like it was made in the 1970s! Thank you to everybody who bought any albums or downloaded tracks. you've enabled me to make another record!
Orlando Bloom fans. check this out! x
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8E4IEQASQw
Alex grew up in Camden Town, London. He recently moved to the
Welsh mountains. It is in this relative isolation that Alex wrote and recorded ‘Tardis Heart’, his third album, a beautiful collection of stripped back heart-wrenching songs.
“It’s an honest, emotional record that didn’t rely on big production.
We made it at home with friends and local musicians… it was simple and spontaneous… and sounds like something from the 70s…”
‘Tardis Heart’ was mixed by Adam Fuest at Twin Peaks Studios on the top of the Brecon Beacons in the National Park.
Alex is married to the novelist Jenny Valentine.
ALEX VALENTINE BY ANDY GILL. 2004
'My thing has always been turning sadness into something beautiful' Alex Valentine
Alex Valentines debut album, Local History is released on 28th July 2005 on Struck Dumb Records. Local History is a beautiful album, about loss and Valentines belief that everyone is flawed, and every situation ends badly, expressed in lines like 'I believe we're all wasters or freaks, all of us the same, yet each of us unique.' With its powerful songs and heroic string arrangements, it has something of The Verve about it. Alexs gritty, emotive vocal approach has also been compared to Tracy Chapman and Joni Mitchell.
Its a collection of songs about loneliness, drug abuse, gambling, truck-stop diner romances and relationship post-mortems. "Most of the songs are about some sort of carnage" says Valentine, which is evident from the first track, Spinning Wheel, a song inspired by his own gambling past.
As a sensitive adolescent, Alex was expelled from school twice, and turned to music to understand his emotions. "I knew when I heard Simon & Garfunkel that that was what I wanted to do," says Valentine.
In 1996 Alex recorded his first mini-album - but there wasnt much call for singer/songwriters back at the tail end of Britpop, so he jumped on his Vespa motorbike to deliver his self-financed album to the shops personally.
His emotional involvement with his music has got him into trouble in the past, even affecting his choice of gigs. With the fall of the Ceausescu regime in Romania, he was moved to play a gig in the newly liberated country. He sprung out of a box onstage, sung four of his songs - surrounded by bunny-girls then made a speech in Romanian about peace and fellowship (which the night before he had dreamt that the philosopher Bertrand Russell had written). 35 Million people watched the show on television. However, an appearance on the evening tv news was misinterpated as support for the new regime of Ceausescu's deputy Ionescu. Valentine had to flee up to the mountains and go into hiding finally escaping to the airport early one morning two or three days later.
Valentines song-writing also causes him problems, as he draws not only on his own experiences and personal hardships, but also those around him. "Some of the songs are about friends that I love, imagining what they're going through. Knowing them, and seeing it from outside, at a distance, can be quite powerful sometimes. Good Enough To Eat', is about someone I know, a serial monogamist who is very close to me, who goes through men like most people go through newspapers."
"I'm firmly of the view that we're all individuals, and to group all men together like they do in those women's magazine articles - and vice-versa - is a load of bollocks. It's a fallacy that women are more sensitive than men." Live dates to be announced shortly.
Colour photography by Ben Ingham, monochrome by J.P.Defaut
