About Lucinda Belle
Lucinda Belle is the London-based singer, songwriter, world-class harpist, widely-travelled session player, TV and film music composer and sonic explorer that we met in 2010 at the helm of the Lucinda Belle Orchestra. Their acclaimed album My Harp & 45 Strings landed Lucinda on the Radio 2 playlist, but all of that could only begin to prepare you for what’s next.
“Rockabilly gypsy jazz” is how Lucinda describes her remarkable new album Do Your Time, which is sure to win the hearts and minds of everyone who ever loved the romantic swoon and sexy allure of rock, soul and jazz icons from Ruth Brown to Amy Winehouse. It sounds utterly classic and entirely 2014 at the same time.
There’s still a feature role for her harp, but with the addition of the surf guitar sound she loves as well as acoustic guitar, upright bass, keyboards and drums. “It’s got the sentimentality of 1930s-40s songwriting,” she says, “and the sex appeal and style of the late ’50s, early ’60s, artists like Ruth Brown and Keely Smith. But in terms of groove, I still wanted it to sound contemporary.”
Ms Belle has also been immersed in film and TV work, including a song for the soundtrack of For No Good Reason, about the life and times of artist Ralph Steadman and starring Johnny Depp. After premiering at the London Film Festival last autumn, it’s been selected as the North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival 2013.
That’s nowhere near all: Lucinda’s been working with award-winning theatre company Punchdrunk, graduating from Berklee College of Music with a certificate in film and TV music studies and composing scores for both a feature-length film and shorts. She’s also developing a museum installation piece and a cutting-edge project with neuroscientists, PhD students and doctors at Queen Mary University.
Do Your Time was produced and mixed by Tim Bran (Dreadzone, Richard Ashcroft) and created at Liam Watson’s all-analogue Toe Rag Studios, where the White Stripes famously created Elephant. It features a return writing engagement on the moody and magnificent My Only Lament with Belle’s friend Ed Harcourt, with whom she’d written Northern Lights on the last album.
Lucinda started playing the harp at six, returning to it after she’d cultivated a panoramic music taste that embraces everyone from Django Reinhardt to Giuseppe Verdi. She’s played on records and shows by the Pet Shop Boys, Annie Lennox, Rufus Wainwright et al, and via a publishing deal with Perfect Songs, worked with Trevor Horn and written for Lisa Stansfield and others.
Lucinda has so many strings to that harp of hers that anything and everything is possible, which brings us back to the new album. “It’s called Do Your Time because it’s the culmination of a whole lot of blood, sweat and tears, and that’s what brings it to life,” she says. Having done the time and paid her musical and emotional dues, Lucinda Belle’s moment has arrived.
