CLOUD BOAT REMIX SASHA SIEM'S 'MY FRIEND'....
“Coming on like Bjork fused with Joanna Newsom... painstaking intricacy” - NME
"bewitchingly complex rhythms and swirling drama" - Wonderland Magazine
“sweeping, widescreen grandeur… both contagious and quite, quite affecting” - Clash Magazine
"intelligence that places her among a pack of similarly singular artists like Andrew Bird and Joanna Newsom" - Q Magazine
"demands every single bit of your bolt-upright attention" - The Line Of Best Fit
"Sasha Siem makes us own our femininity" – Noisey
“gorgeous and emotive work, with lyrics that allow for self-reflection” – The 405
Anglo-Norwegian Sasha Siem has shared a Cloud Boat remix of her new single, ‘My Friend’. Available now as a standalone single through Blue Plum Records, ‘My Friend’ will be supported by a remix bundle, available from December 21. Sasha recently played a sold out headline show at London’s St Pancras Old Church - her first London show since performing at The Linbury Studio Theatre at the Royal Opera House and the Kings Place Festival in 2013.
Produced by Valgeir Sigurðsson (Sigur Ros, Bjork, Bonnie Prince Billy, Feist) and recorded at Reykjavik’s legendary Greenhouse Studios, ‘My Friend’ is a vibrant collision of Siem’s contradictory influences: her fascination for likeminded lovers of idiosyncratic song-writing such as Bjork and PJ Harvey, and her youthful love of song-poets such as Leonard Cohen.
The song's beguiling lyric is as starkly unsentimental as it is intimate and heartfelt - "But don’t you know that you’re better than that/That you’re worthy of more than the bathroom floor/At the end of the night” - and acts as a guide, addressing Sasha’s character-concept of Girl as a contemporary troubadour on a quest through a series of entangled relationships and binding attachments. This quest is a repeat theme teased out in Sasha’s music and is dealt with in a detailed, intimate and often playful manner.
Sasha began playing the piano at the age of five, picked up the cello soon after, and by the age of 11 found herself studying at London’s Guildhall at weekends. By her early 20s she had composed for, amongst others, the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra while in 2010 she won a prestigious British Composer Award. Her musical background collides colourfully with her appreciation of more contemporary artists such as Andrew Bird and Florence & The Machine, giving way to her songs which have recently been hotly tipped by the likes of NME, Clash and Noisey.