DESCRIPTION:
Wandering the streets & hills humming to himself, an inspired contemporary songwriter and performer, his intimate songs bloom with the beauty and tragedy of epic human stories. Otti Albietz was born in Malaga, Spain, and grew up traveling around Europe and Morocco with his brother, and parents. Remembering rivers, scrapyards, kiosks, pavements, stray dogs, smugglers, motorways, and spending his late teenage years living independently between England, Germany, and Spain. His drive to make music led him to move to the UK.
He has lived in England since 2005, spending the first 5 years as lead vocalist and writer in various bands, before choosing in April 2012 to pursue music under his own name. This has given him the freedom to collaborate on his songs with an orbiting group of individual musicians. These have included; experimental flautist Geoff Leigh ('Henry Cow'), instrumentalist/artist Thad Skews ('Phil Collins 3'/'Unicorndad vrs Robodad'), Musician/Producer Harvey Summers, Girlfriend/Soprano Anna Graebe, Drummers Benno Schlachter, and Sacha Trochet, amongst others.
Otti creates image-laden songs with an intuitive sensitivity oscillating between intense realism and fantastical dreams. His self-produced debut album 'One' was released on 'Big Village Records' in January 2011, and toured through central Europe in August 2011, visiting Basel, Hamburg and Mullhouse.
'Bubbytone II', is Otti Albietz's second album, and his debut with label BBE, recorded with friend, and Producer, Harvey Summers, in Harvey's gorgeous Broadoak Studio, in East Sussex. Harvey has worked with a large number of artists, amongst them; Danny Thompson, Paul McCartney, John Pearson, Mumm Ra, and many more.
Otti describes the drive for recording Bubbytone II as coming partly from "a personal need to put down a mountain of songs, that had accumulated in past years, which are likely to give birth to the majority of a third album too, though shhhsh about that for now; and partly an invitation from, and desire to work with Harvey Summers, more extensively, as before we'd only worked in short bursts".
He has since toured Europe once more in July 2012, and spent the year sharing stages, in London, Hastings, Brighton, and Oxford, with artists such as 'She Makes War', 'The Mccarricks', 'Aaron King', 'Quintron and miss pussycat' (New Orleans), 'Zoe Konez', 'Trevor Moss & Hannah Lou', 'Billy Bones', 'Liz Green', 'More Like Trees', and 'Tim Hoyte'. The most striking feature of this music is the openness and intimacy that extends beyond the wonderfully crafted songs.