DESCRIPTION:
Genre : avant folk
Origin : Los Angeles, CA
Album : Cosmic Ocean Ship (2011)
Website : http://www.miadoitodd.com/

Prolific singer-songwriter from Los Angeles, California Mia Doi Todd returns with her 9th album, Cosmic Ocean Ship, produced by Jonathan Wilson. Recorded in Los Angeles to analog 2 inch tape, the album has a warmth and depth that showcases Mia's beautiful, powerful, unique, and at times delicate voice. It’s being released on City Zen Records/Virtual Label this Spring.

Inspired by interstellar journeys, reflective encounters with friends, and explorations of forest, beach, jungle, desert, and city in Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, France, and India, Mia searched deep within to create the songs and performances that make up Cosmic Ocean Ship to communicate a new perspective - one that transports the listener into the ecstatic radiance of intimate Love, and one that is yearning with an overall optimistic vision for the future of Planet Earth and the human experience. In reaction against the political, economic, and environmental upheaval and devastation of the last decade, Mia felt compelled as an artist to take a stand and create something for our time that focuses on beauty, joy, light, and Love:

"Like all my songs, these are very earnest and personal, but I hope they are universal as well and can reach people's hearts and turn them on! Modern life demands a lot of the human mind and body; we become desensitized and hardened. The songs on Cosmic Ocean Ship offer a chance for a softening, a heart opening. They are joyful!"

The whole record was tracked in just over 4 days, with Gabe Noel on bass, Andres Renteria on percussion, Adam MacDougall on keys and Jonathan Wilson both engineering and rotating on various instruments. Most of the songs were recorded live with the band all playing together and Mia playing and singing in the same room. Listening to Cosmic Ocean Ship, one hears the sweet nuanced relationship between the room, the tubes, the weathered circuitry, and the collective energy in the sessions. There's a real magic captured on tape here.

In addition to the original compositions that make up the majority of Cosmic Ocean Ship, Mia covers the classic lament "Gracias a la Vida" written by Chilean Folk artist Violeta Parra in 1966, and "Canto de Iemanjá," the Afro Samba tribute to the great Orisha of the Ocean, by Baden Powell and Vinícius de Moraes.

Cosmic Ocean Ship is exactly the kind of music the world needs right now! Honest, vulnerable, imaginative, courageous, and full of color and dimension.

Mia began singing as a child in choirs and later studied classical vocal technique. She found her own voice in writing songs about nature, romance, love and loss. Her first solo acoustic album, The Ewe and the Eye was released in 1997 as Todd was graduating from Yale University. She then spent a year in Japan, studying the avant-garde dance form Butoh and returned to the States to release two more acoustic albums, Come Out of Your Mine (1999) and Zeroone (2001). In 2002, she was signed to Columbia Records and recorded The Golden State, collaborating with producer Mitchell Froom on more elaborate instrumentation. That was followed up by two albums on the indie label Plug Research, Manzanita and an album of remixes, entitled La Ninja: Amor and Other Dreams of Manzanita. In 2008, Mia released Gea on her own label City Zen Records. It was produced with Carlos Nino and features string and horn arrangements by Miguel Atwood-Ferguson. Mia also released an instrumental album of meditational music, entitled Morning Music in 2009.

Mia has toured in the US and Europe, headlining and in support of fellow artists such as Jose Gonzalez, Lou Barlow, Saul Williams, Dungen, The Books, and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. In 2009, she toured in Brazil for the first time, performing in Sao Paulo and at the legendary Circo Voador in Rio de Janeiro.