| An In Depth Biography of the O's, Sent by Steve A. |
| May 25, 2005, 11:04 pm |
A big thank you to Steve A. from the O's Official site for sending in this brilliant biography of the O's. Have fun reading! Yes, James is touring again! Vanessa was born in Paris but relocated to London in the 90's as she was drawn to the music scene there, she got signed by a cool label called Heavenly Records [Beth Orton, The Doves, St Etienne] and was writing and producing electronic music but always trying to fuse that with real songs, pretty underground and mostly working alone, she learnt a lot about production and built her own home studio. She met up with Niclas and Andreas [from the Swedish bands Atomic Swing and Popsicle respectively] two years back through mutual friends [Niclas wrote the songs for Cardigans lead singer Nena's solo album 'A Camp' which Vanessa had heard and liked] and was happy to get into what she calls the 'classic songwriting within a band situation'. She would go to Sweden and they to London and they would alsomeet up in Paris [Vanessa still has an apartment there in Montmartre] to write and record demo's, they kept many of the demo vocals on the album. In early 2004 [i think it was] Niclas went to NY to work and write with James on the Karen material, Vanessa and Andreas went over to work with Nic in his free time, booked into a hotel and set up their recording eqipment there and came up with some songs, Vanessa had the idea for Plus Rien and they all worked on it there with James coming over to put some guitars on it, he also played some of his ideas which Vanessa liked a lot, the atmosphere of those ideas was right for The O's and Vanessa and the guys came up with some melodies there and then, one of which is the track 'Stand'. The relationship was working well creatively so they decided to carry on together [although James had the APC tour to do] whenever they could and James played some guitars on further tracks which came out on the limited edition EP [just 1000] in 2003 [Plus Rien]. Plus Rien was playlisted on P3 main national radio in Sweden but the band were not in a position to play live so decided to carry on and finish the album before they would think about that and that brings us to now, the album is due to come out next week, the first track taken from the album has just been playlisted on P3 again, it's called Bagatelle and you can hear some of that on the website, we are putting in some live dates in mid-July and will announce those soon, it will be 6 on stage including James and will also include Pelle Gunnerfeldt on bass who is the producer of The Hives and co-producer of The O's...it should be great. Credit: Steve A. Source: Vanessa and the O's |