Out Yer Box Records
Release Date - 5 July 2024
Catalogue - OYBAL004
Singer/songwriter and indie-dance pop icon Lisa Moorish returns to music after a 20-year hiatus to deliver a new album, ‘Divine Chaos’, on the sister label to Irvine Welsh’s Jack Said What imprint. Already with several single releases out in the ether, Lisa has come back with renewed energy, enjoying support across the national airwaves from BBC Radio 6 Music’s Lauren Laverne and Chris Hawkins, Jo Whiley on Radio 2, and Gary Crowley on BBC Radio London, amongst others.
On this new album it was important for Lisa to work with a female co-producer, and so she teamed up with Zoe Devlin Love (Alabama 3). Renowned producer Steve Mac brought an extra dimension with the tougher electronic beats in the collection. Together they have delivered many flavours - from dance-influenced tracks to indie electronica - in the process amalgamating Lisa’s varied sounds across the decades.
Her return to music was inspired by good friend and author Irvine Welsh who she says, ‘reignited my musical flame, but having faith in me as an artist, and dragging me kicking and screaming back into the studio’, where she worked on songs for his upcoming Trainspotting musical and later going onto to produce her own body of work.
Concept and co production on this album created by Lisa, the name ‘Divine Chaos’ derives from a play that Lisa performed in, The Divine Chaos Of Starry Things, where she took the lead role as the French Revolutionary, Louis Michel. The play's title and one of its themes is reflected in the title track from the album. “It’s also a summary and description of an all-encompassing, heady and chaotic love experience with another,” Lisa says. “The theme of the album mostly.”
One of the lead songs from the album is ‘Sylvia’, based on American poet Sylvia Plath. Lisa was first told she had a striking similarity to the poet around 20 years ago. “When I saw one particular photo, it was like looking in the mirror,” she exclaims. “It's insane”.
“Although I knew who Sylvia Plath was, and mostly the tragic side of her life, I wasn’t that familiar with her works or her personal story,” Lisa continues. “And the more I read about her, her poetry and her classic novel The Bell Jar, the more I realised how much we had in common. We share many parallels in relation to her somewhat unfortunate loves and losses.”
‘The Hunger’ is an alternative pop song loosely based on the 1980s gothic vampire romance film directed by Tony Scott of the same name, which featured some of Lisa’s favourite actors of all time.
Other songs to note include ‘Susan & David’, a dance track about two lost people who can't be together in any kind of reality. 'Susan' and 'David' are like pet names they use for each other to escape the reality of their doomed romance.
‘Social Pariah’, meanwhile, again draws on personal life experiences - this was the third single release which deals with what Lisa calls “those treacherous, duplicitous and narcissistic types”.
Lisa Moorish first made her name in music as a teenager, when she had a club hit in 1989 with ‘Rock To The Beat’, a track written by Detroit techno luminaries Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson that fed into the UK’s acid house explosion at the time. She went on to work with the likes of Paul Weller and George Michael before being swept up in the Britpop scene and recording vocals on tracks by some of the biggest bands of that era - Oasis, Blur and Ash. She then started her own indie electro-punk band, Kill City, in the early noughties, and they were quickly snapped up by music mogul Alan McGee and signed to his new label, Poptones.
With this album, it feels like Lisa has gone full circle: back to working with electronic music again. The songs have attitude, indicative of a life lived on both sides of the tracks. “I came from the acid house and techno scene when I started out aged 17,” she says, “and it's like a second shot at it, without the destruction, distractions, addictions and bullshit.”
“Lisa has a heart the size of the sun, which she's fearless about wearing on her sleeve, absorbing all the joy and all the knocks that come with the courage to live your life to the full, and on your own terms. We're fortunate that she's now refracted this experience through the lens of her beautiful, indomitable soul, onto a completely amazing and irresistible record.” - IRVINE WELSH
Buy/Download:
Soundcloud - / lisa-moorish-divine-chaos
Bandcamp - jacksaidwhat.b...
Stream/Listen:
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Apple Music - / divine-chaos
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© Jack Said What 2024
5 сен 2024
