The Adventures Of Ghosthorse & Stillborn is the third ventricle of the CocoRosie liturgy, and represents another stride onwards from their previous works. Bianca and Sierra recorded in Reykjavik, home to dark fairytales and magical fables…
If Jean Genet was the muse that inspired Noah’s Ark, the spirit guide for this album was Wee Willie Winkie. A pre-pubescent idol who never changes out of his bedtime clothes, Wee Willie Winkie runs through town, upstairs and downstairs in his nightgown, knocking on the windows…
After completing demos in the south of France, where their mother lives, on this album CocoRosie worked specifically with Icelandic producer Valgeir Sigurðsson, otherwise known as Bjork’s main studio conspirator since Dancer in the Dark, collaborating on Selma Songs, Vespertine, Medúlla and Drawing Restraint 9. An inventive programmer, arranger and writer utilizing a combination of traditional methods and digital surgery, Valgeir has acquired a ‘recording / production black belt’, working with Múm, Bonnie Prince Billy and Howie B amongst many others.
Rainbowarriors are on a crusade for the kind of drugfree America where the elected officials are tranny shaman and the religious leaders are winged evangelists who speak in tongues of Happy Core. We definitely moved to the afterhours of life and unpacked our bags for this endeavour...
The Adventures of Ghostborn & Stillborn continues to experiment with the sisters’ paradoxical voices – opera-trained Sierra, and Bianca’s highly distinctive caterwauling – and clashing personalities, juxtaposing devastating ballads with rousing tracks like live favourite ‘Japan’ and the playful forthcoming single ‘Rainbowarriors’ which betray their hip-hop influences.
Birthed through an intricate process of prank phone calls and clairvoyant documentation, The Adventures of Ghosthorse & Stillborn follows CocoRosie and their crew of miscreants through the Mechanical Forest of Feelings. “It was there we first confronted the Warlock, Laughing Crow, and buried the Black Dove.” crying through the lock “Are the children all in bed? It’s past eight o’clock.” He might have been an O.R.W. (original rainbowarrior).
‘Sunshine’, Sierra’s delicate, sparse piano lament has also been recent highlight of their live set, while Bianca’s emotional ‘Western Vampire’, are both much more personal and revealing. The girls see this album as a departure from their earlier obscured blur of stained glass rêve, to what they describe as “a more self-exploitive memoir”.
Sierra comes from the classical world: control, mastery, dominance. And the classical world has its own bulimia. Ballet, torturous feet and leg bending contraptions – classicalism is like contortionism. It’s a cruel circus, like hunting unicorns or killing My Little Pony. Bianca, on the other hand, she’s more of a lazy-toed lobster, somewhat of a psychological pistol. Much in the same way as Bianca, “Stillborn” is definitely the littlest champion. She’s always ruminating on blurry words and they, in turn, are always mutating, changing, transforming.
Returned to Paris upon completing the album, they collaborated on the visuals with the infamous Pierre et Gilles, renowned French artists whose photographic themes include homoeroticism and the male nude, glamour and fame, religion and myth, Greek gods, French sailors, muscle men, Indian film stars and Roman Catholic saints. To be sure, this is an artistic marriage made in heaven! The duo shot the iconic images of Bianca and Sierra that comprise the artwork to The Adventures of Ghostborn & Stillborn.
Since the release of Noah’s Ark in 2005, both Sierra and Bianca have been busy with side projects involving music, fashion and art exhibits. Bianca set up the record label Voodoo-EROS with fellow visual artist Militia Shimkowitz, born of a compilation they made from early recordings of their favourite artists and friends including the likes of Antony, Devendra Banhart and Vashti Bunyan. The idea of creating a label for The Enlightened Family compilation quickly became a full-fledged venture and is a fitting extension of the magnetic web Bianca and Sierra have woven since forming CocoRosie.
One of the four albums thus far released on Voodoo-EROS is Sierra’s side project Metallic Falcons. If CocoRosie’s music is about looking for a glimmer of light in the darkness, then Sierra suggests the Metallic Falcon project is the exact opposite with its foreboding operettas on Desert Doughnuts strive to take the light into the dark. The album was completed once again with the help of their ‘family’ Devendra Banhart and Anthony and the Johnsons, and with further signings such as Bunny Rabbit, Nomi and Diane Cluck, Voodoo-EROS was named label of the month by Dazed and Confused.
Voodoo-EROS also has its own art gallery / shop in Manhattan, The Museum of Nice Items. Bianca explains it as “the first kind of physical appendage to the label. We plan to have a festival, press books, DVDs and art shows to help represent artists in a multi-dimensional way”. Not only do they sell records and merchandise for the bands on their label, they also design and sell a range of clothes. Bianca has already exhibited her work in their ‘museum’ last March and April, under her alias Red Bone Slim Vs Itself: an exhibition of drawings.
CocoRosie will be touring extensively in 2007, initial dates will be announced soon. They perform at the prestigious Carnegie Hall in NYC on 2 February.
Praise for Noah’s Ark:
“when CocoRosie work their insular magic, everything around them becomes cocooned in their rose-tinted reverie” CD of the Week, Daily Telegraph
“[CocoRosie] celebrate the instinctive and unconstrained” CD of the Week, The Observer
“precocious and eerie ballads that sit somewhere between Bjork’s enchanted flights and Billie Holiday’s opium blues” 4/5 The Times ‘Knowledge’
“mesmerising… a fiercely independent force railing against the guitar band world we live in” 4/5 The Sun
“CocoRosie sound, blissfully, like no one else” 4/5 Mojo
“shard after shard of fractured melody that burrows deep into the subconscious… a spellbinding collage“ 4/5 Q
“magnificently otherworldly, a living Frida Kahlo artwork inhabiting their own secret garden of sepia-tinted sensuality” 4/5 Uncut
“a magical, mystical brew… you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more bizarrely original, yet readily accessible and enchanting record this year” 5/5, The List
“[CocoRosie] find beauty and greatness in the most minimal of sounds. Outstanding” 9/10 Rocksound
“undoubtedly one of the year’s most astonishing records” 9/10 Undercover
“the sound of love, in all its fractured, prismic wonder” 4/5 The Fly
“touching, sweet and painfully romantic” 8/10 Vice
“weird, but more than a little wonderful too” NME
“an Angela Carter short story made into a children’s cartoon by Bjork… a world of real sonic enchantment… like being served lightly opiated fondant fancies at an improbably bohemian tea party” Sunday Telegraph
“weird and scary, yet hauntingly lovely” Independent on Sunday
“moving and evocative… CocoRosie certainly dare to be different, but it’s their masterly musicianship and gorgeous poetry that will steal your heart” Word Magazine
“a uniquely twisted kind of beauty” Evening Standard
“urban lament is interchanged with an earthy shamanism with a sprinkling of animal noises throughout. Noah’s Ark retains their beautiful otherness while coming across as more focussed and confident” The Wire
“a supernatural sounding concoction of folky lullabies and torch song classicism” Metro
“beguiling” Observer Music Monthly
If Jean Genet was the muse that inspired Noah’s Ark, the spirit guide for this album was Wee Willie Winkie. A pre-pubescent idol who never changes out of his bedtime clothes, Wee Willie Winkie runs through town, upstairs and downstairs in his nightgown, knocking on the windows…
After completing demos in the south of France, where their mother lives, on this album CocoRosie worked specifically with Icelandic producer Valgeir Sigurðsson, otherwise known as Bjork’s main studio conspirator since Dancer in the Dark, collaborating on Selma Songs, Vespertine, Medúlla and Drawing Restraint 9. An inventive programmer, arranger and writer utilizing a combination of traditional methods and digital surgery, Valgeir has acquired a ‘recording / production black belt’, working with Múm, Bonnie Prince Billy and Howie B amongst many others.
Rainbowarriors are on a crusade for the kind of drugfree America where the elected officials are tranny shaman and the religious leaders are winged evangelists who speak in tongues of Happy Core. We definitely moved to the afterhours of life and unpacked our bags for this endeavour...
The Adventures of Ghostborn & Stillborn continues to experiment with the sisters’ paradoxical voices – opera-trained Sierra, and Bianca’s highly distinctive caterwauling – and clashing personalities, juxtaposing devastating ballads with rousing tracks like live favourite ‘Japan’ and the playful forthcoming single ‘Rainbowarriors’ which betray their hip-hop influences.
Birthed through an intricate process of prank phone calls and clairvoyant documentation, The Adventures of Ghosthorse & Stillborn follows CocoRosie and their crew of miscreants through the Mechanical Forest of Feelings. “It was there we first confronted the Warlock, Laughing Crow, and buried the Black Dove.” crying through the lock “Are the children all in bed? It’s past eight o’clock.” He might have been an O.R.W. (original rainbowarrior).
‘Sunshine’, Sierra’s delicate, sparse piano lament has also been recent highlight of their live set, while Bianca’s emotional ‘Western Vampire’, are both much more personal and revealing. The girls see this album as a departure from their earlier obscured blur of stained glass rêve, to what they describe as “a more self-exploitive memoir”.
Sierra comes from the classical world: control, mastery, dominance. And the classical world has its own bulimia. Ballet, torturous feet and leg bending contraptions – classicalism is like contortionism. It’s a cruel circus, like hunting unicorns or killing My Little Pony. Bianca, on the other hand, she’s more of a lazy-toed lobster, somewhat of a psychological pistol. Much in the same way as Bianca, “Stillborn” is definitely the littlest champion. She’s always ruminating on blurry words and they, in turn, are always mutating, changing, transforming.
Returned to Paris upon completing the album, they collaborated on the visuals with the infamous Pierre et Gilles, renowned French artists whose photographic themes include homoeroticism and the male nude, glamour and fame, religion and myth, Greek gods, French sailors, muscle men, Indian film stars and Roman Catholic saints. To be sure, this is an artistic marriage made in heaven! The duo shot the iconic images of Bianca and Sierra that comprise the artwork to The Adventures of Ghostborn & Stillborn.
Since the release of Noah’s Ark in 2005, both Sierra and Bianca have been busy with side projects involving music, fashion and art exhibits. Bianca set up the record label Voodoo-EROS with fellow visual artist Militia Shimkowitz, born of a compilation they made from early recordings of their favourite artists and friends including the likes of Antony, Devendra Banhart and Vashti Bunyan. The idea of creating a label for The Enlightened Family compilation quickly became a full-fledged venture and is a fitting extension of the magnetic web Bianca and Sierra have woven since forming CocoRosie.
One of the four albums thus far released on Voodoo-EROS is Sierra’s side project Metallic Falcons. If CocoRosie’s music is about looking for a glimmer of light in the darkness, then Sierra suggests the Metallic Falcon project is the exact opposite with its foreboding operettas on Desert Doughnuts strive to take the light into the dark. The album was completed once again with the help of their ‘family’ Devendra Banhart and Anthony and the Johnsons, and with further signings such as Bunny Rabbit, Nomi and Diane Cluck, Voodoo-EROS was named label of the month by Dazed and Confused.
Voodoo-EROS also has its own art gallery / shop in Manhattan, The Museum of Nice Items. Bianca explains it as “the first kind of physical appendage to the label. We plan to have a festival, press books, DVDs and art shows to help represent artists in a multi-dimensional way”. Not only do they sell records and merchandise for the bands on their label, they also design and sell a range of clothes. Bianca has already exhibited her work in their ‘museum’ last March and April, under her alias Red Bone Slim Vs Itself: an exhibition of drawings.
CocoRosie will be touring extensively in 2007, initial dates will be announced soon. They perform at the prestigious Carnegie Hall in NYC on 2 February.
Praise for Noah’s Ark:
“when CocoRosie work their insular magic, everything around them becomes cocooned in their rose-tinted reverie” CD of the Week, Daily Telegraph
“[CocoRosie] celebrate the instinctive and unconstrained” CD of the Week, The Observer
“precocious and eerie ballads that sit somewhere between Bjork’s enchanted flights and Billie Holiday’s opium blues” 4/5 The Times ‘Knowledge’
“mesmerising… a fiercely independent force railing against the guitar band world we live in” 4/5 The Sun
“CocoRosie sound, blissfully, like no one else” 4/5 Mojo
“shard after shard of fractured melody that burrows deep into the subconscious… a spellbinding collage“ 4/5 Q
“magnificently otherworldly, a living Frida Kahlo artwork inhabiting their own secret garden of sepia-tinted sensuality” 4/5 Uncut
“a magical, mystical brew… you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more bizarrely original, yet readily accessible and enchanting record this year” 5/5, The List
“[CocoRosie] find beauty and greatness in the most minimal of sounds. Outstanding” 9/10 Rocksound
“undoubtedly one of the year’s most astonishing records” 9/10 Undercover
“the sound of love, in all its fractured, prismic wonder” 4/5 The Fly
“touching, sweet and painfully romantic” 8/10 Vice
“weird, but more than a little wonderful too” NME
“an Angela Carter short story made into a children’s cartoon by Bjork… a world of real sonic enchantment… like being served lightly opiated fondant fancies at an improbably bohemian tea party” Sunday Telegraph
“weird and scary, yet hauntingly lovely” Independent on Sunday
“moving and evocative… CocoRosie certainly dare to be different, but it’s their masterly musicianship and gorgeous poetry that will steal your heart” Word Magazine
“a uniquely twisted kind of beauty” Evening Standard
“urban lament is interchanged with an earthy shamanism with a sprinkling of animal noises throughout. Noah’s Ark retains their beautiful otherness while coming across as more focussed and confident” The Wire
“a supernatural sounding concoction of folky lullabies and torch song classicism” Metro
“beguiling” Observer Music Monthly