Monday, March 28, 2016

Abigail Blake - Liar

Hailing from Norwich, UK, Abigail Blake is a 21-year-old singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer who merges her love for playing classical harp with her passion for producing electronic music to create what she herself describes as twinklestep. Not only is Abigail obviously very talented but she also has a very fascinating backstory as well.

Over the years Abigail has studied in depth music theory, composition, business, sound engineering, performance and production, giving her a rounded knowledge of the music industry and culture. After achieving high grades at sixth form college, gaining top marks on the Artist Development course at Access To Music, Norwich, Abigail moved to the University of Lincoln to study for an Audio Production degree. Despite achieving some of the highest results of the year, Abigail concluded that university was too restricting and ultimately not the right path for her, so she dropped out, and is now a full time musician.

In contradiction of gender stereotypes, Abigail produces all of her own music independently, engineers her own complex performance set up, and ultimately has control of her sound. She is no stranger to sexism within the music industry, and has even been interviewed on her experiences of this subject in which she says:

"...you should have seen his face when I started talking about how I EQ my harp... I guess music production is considered such a male thing in the industry that apparently it’s a surprise when a female knows what side chain compression is."

A competent pianist, guitarist and harpist, Abigail uses all three instruments to write and perform. However, being dyslexic, Abigail is unable to read music, and despite studying music theory for nearly 6 years, she simply couldn't pick it up.

"I believe that perfect pitch and my ablity to play music by ear is simply the flip side to the coin of my dyslexia and dyscalculia, so I'm ok with not being so academic," she says.

Abigail has a lot of performing experience, from festivals like The Secret Garden Party and Latitude Festival, to an array of venues across Norwich including the award winning Norwich Arts Centre, The Waterfront Studios and even performed for music mogul Huw Stephens at the Radio 1 Academy when it visited Norwich in 2015. Abigail has supported up and coming artists including Ethan Ash, Anna Pancaldi and JP Cooper.

Now following on from last year's release of her debut EP, ETCH, Abigail returns with her new single called "Liar", along with an accompanying music video which she made to demonstrates a new and intriguing style of performance to match the twinklestep idea.

Listen to "Liar" below.




"Liar" is available now on iTunes.

For more info. on Abigail Blake, please visit her website.
Also be sure to follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

No comments:

Post a Comment