Rock 'n' Roll 'n' Blues Women!

Don’t underestimate her age – the 16-year-old musician flowerovlove is not only an emerging fashion icon, but a quickly evolving songwriter who champions self-love and womanhood. Portraying her own growth like the unstoppable and beautiful growth of a flower, the London-based singer and schoolgirl has captivated the hearts of Gen Z with her relatable lyricism and sunny personality.MORE

London-born, and from Côté d’Ivoire, the emerging artist is an Instagram item adored for her cutting-edge sense of style where she models nifty garms from baggy pullovers and oversized suits with eccentric ties, to cool cowboy boots. As a young, immigrant, and woman of colour with a clear-cut vision, Flowerovlove is dedicated to sustainability, having fun and uplifting women. Coeval caught up with Joyce Cisse AKA Flowerovlove for a conversation about her deep love for music, her groovy garbs and her debut EP, ‘Think Flower’, launching 14/05/21 .MORE

As Flowerovlove, 16-year-old South London born Joyce Cisse makes music driven by hazy nostalgia as much as an unwavering self-belief.

Joyce Cisse meets the lens with a sleepy, feline gaze and blinks slowly, like a cat laying in a chink of sunlight on a Sunday afternoon. It could be contentment she feels: wrapped in a white towelling robe, resting her feet on the table, swirling around a glass of wine; breathing in the scent of a flower that she twirls around her fingers – or it could be a little well-earned contempt. “Send these rappers back to school / Bruh, I’m 15 / You’ll challenge who? / Paris fashion week we do that too / Got the cheque and the boots”, she doesn’t so much sing, as speak with a cool indifference, on the visuals for her track “Malibu”.

And no, she doesn’t flinch once, because it’s all true.

Flowerovlove sees her life as a garden, and for an artist who has only just turned sixteen, its blooms are in colourful abundance. The South Londoner, besides releasing her debut EP Think Flower last year, has walked Paris Fashion Week for Malian/Senegalese heritage label XULY.Bët and been the face of campaigns for the likes of Gucci and Pangaia – oh, and she sold out her first London show too.

Her music, in many ways, is a pressing of these moments like petals in between the pages of a scrapbook. Drunk on pollen and sunshine, her groove-led tunes unravel like a lazy daydream - always light, lo-fi and brimming with a certain radiance that is all her own. “I see myself as a flower,” Cisse tells me. “And I think other people should see themselves that way, too. We’re all growing. In winter, flowers lose their petals and all that fun stuff – you can say it better,” she laughs, “but you will grow them back again.” MORE

SATE is the stage name of Saidah Baba Talibah Matthews, a Canadian rock singer from Toronto, Ontario.^[1] Her 2021 album The Fool was named a Juno Award nominee for Alternative Album of the Year at the Juno Awards of 2022.^[2]

The daughter of influential Canadian blues and jazz singer Salome Bey,^[3] she began her musical career as an occasional performer with her mother under the name Salome Bey and the Relatives.^[4] She was a vocalist with the funk rock band Blaxäm in the 1990s, alongside her sister Tuku and Washington Savage of Infidels.^[5] The band released the EP Kiss My Afro in 1998,^[6] but broke up before releasing a full-length album.^[7]

 

As Saidah Baba Talibah, she continued to perform as a solo artist,^[8] and released her debut solo album (S)cream in 2011.^[9] In this era, she described herself as having been inspired in part by Black Rock Coalition artists such as Living Colour.^[10]
In 2014, she performed at Toronto's Luminato Festival with TV on the Radio.^[11]
She subsequently changed her stage name to SATE, on the grounds that performing under her given names was giving audiences a false impression that they would be seeing a world music artist, when in fact her music blends elements of soul and funk with blues rock and punk rock.^[12] As SATE, she released the album RedBlack&Blue in 2016;^[13] the album's track "Know My Name" has been used as backing music in promotional advertisements for Sportsnet.^[14]

The Fool was released in 2021.^[14] Her video for the song "Nobody" features The OBGMs appearing as her backing band;^[14] the album track "Guardian Angel", a short interlude, is a recording of SATE as a child singing along with her mother, which Saidah found in her mother's possessions only after her death in 2020.^[12] MORE

Hope Sandoval was born in 1966 and grew up in a Catholic Mexican-American family in East Los Angeles, California. She attended Mark Keppel High School. In 1986, she formed the folk music duo Going Home with Sylvia Gomez, and recorded one album produced by David Roback, which is yet to be released.^[67]

 

Besides vocals, Sandoval plays acoustic guitar, harmonica, Hammond organ, percussion, glockenspiel and xylophone. During live performances, Sandoval prefers to sing in near-darkness with only a dim backlight, playing the tambourine, harmonica, glockenspiel or shaker.^[68] She is reputed to have a shy personality, and rarely interacts with the audience,^[69] once stating "I just get really nervous. Once you're onstage, you're expected to perform. I don't do that. I always feel awkward about just standing there and not speaking to the audience, but it's difficult for me."^[70]

Sandoval currently resides in both San Francisco and Ireland.^[71][72]

Mazzy Star - Into Dust

Watch on YouTube

Yuna Shishido^[2] (宍戸佑名, Shishido Yūna, born June 23, 1985^[1]), known as a solo artist by the stage name Kavka Shishido (シシド・カフカ, Shishido Kafuka, stylized in Japan as SHISHIDO KAVKA)^[1] is a Japanese drummer and vocalist. Originally a member of the rock band The News, she debuted as a solo musician in 2012 and released her debut album Kavkanize in 2013. She prominently plays the drums in all of her promotions.

Shishido was given the name "Kavka" for her stage name by copy editor Junpei Watanabe. Shishido always wore black, reminding him of a crow. He picked the Czech word kavka, which refers to the daurian jackdaw.^[3][4]

Shishido was born in Mexico in 1985 to Japanese parents. She lived there until she was two, later going to Japan for elementary school.^[3] Between the ages of 13 and 14, Shishido lived in Argentina.^[3] She learnt Spanish to use in her daily life, though on returning to Japan forgot it since she had nobody with whom to practice.^[4] When she was 14, Shishido was inspired to take up the drums after seeing a live performance on TV. She enjoyed the idea of the drummer being an "unsung hero" of the band, after noticing the camera never focused on the drummer.^[5] She was first taught the basics of drumming at 14, by Daniel "Pipi" Piazzolla, a drummer and grandson of tango musician Astor Piazzolla.^[4]

Shishido started performing with her own vocals at age 20.^[3] In 2004, Shishido joined the all-female band The News as their third drummer.^[4][6][7] In 2005, Shishido started collaborating with The High-Lows' drummer Kenji Ohshima and Uverworld producer Satoru Hiraide, and made a band called Eddy12 (stylized as eddy12) together.^{[8][9][10][11]} During this period, Shishido started to perform in her signature style, performing the drums and singing simultaneously.^[3]

While in Eddy12, Shishido was scouted by a record company for her to debut as a solo musician.^[4] She was scouted before she started performing the drums as part of her act, but added them back in during discussions for how to set her apart from other musicians.^[4] She left The News in 2009,^[6] however continued to work with her Eddy12 bandmates who act as producers.^[4] She debuted under Imperial Records with the digital single "Day Dream Rider" in May 2012. Since then, Shishido released three physical singles, "Aisuru Kakugo", "Music" and "Kiken na Futari". The latter was used as the opening theme song for the TV Asahi drama Doubles: Futari no Keiji.^[3] Shishido released her debut album, Kavkanize, on September 4, 2013. In February 2014, Shishido held her first Japanese tour after the release of her single "Wagamama"/"Miss. Miss Me".^[12]

In September, it was announced that Shishido had switched labels to the newly created Justa Music, a sub-label of Avex Group, and would star in the second series of Erika Sawajiri fashion drama First Class.^[13] Her first release under the label is the song "Don't Be Love" featuring veteran singer-songwriter Kazuyoshi Saito, and will be used as the theme song of the 2015 Fuji Television drama Isha-tachi no Ren'ai Jijō.^[14] This song also serves as the leading track from K⁵, a special extended play where Shishido will collaborate with five different musicians, released in June 2015.^[15]

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Members

Nakano Miho – Vocals/Guitar
Araya Tomomi – Guitar
Oda Mamiko – Bass
Ishikawa Minako – Drums

Former

Okuyama Reika – Drums
Ishibashi Wakano – Keyboard

The original five band members were high school students in Sapporo when they formed the band in 2009. They changed drummers in 2017 and their keyboardist left in 2018. (official site: drops-official.com)

At the moment Drop’s style seems to be changing, though one consistent in their music is that is their sound tends to evoke styles of the sixties and seventies. The song in the above video —こわして— has a loose, grungy, rough-edged sound reminiscent of Patti Smith’s 1976 punk ballad Pissing in a River. Drop’s latest release —毎日がラブソング—is an upbeat song that feels much more ‘pop’. The new style is more accessible, but the arrangement, particularly the horn parts, still has a retro feel, which is a signature feature of band’s sound. When introducing performers they admire, the band members tend to name-check performers from bygone eras (e.g. Little Richard, Elvis, The Beatles, Chet Baker, Link Wray, Earl Palmer, Janis Joplin) or performers who have stylistic roots in the past (e.g., Tom Waits, The Black Keys). These influences come through in the the retro feel of many of the band’s songs.

If the thoughts in your head are about to eat you alive it’s best to get them out of your system. Sometimes this almost feels like vomiting. At least it did for Elena Tonra. ‘It was the end of a relationship, and there was no way to undo it.,’ the leading lady of acclaimed UK trio Daughter explains the scenario behind her first ever solo record. Going to the studio on a daily basis was her therapeutic way out before getting eaten by all these thoughts as she explains: ‘The moment I realised it wasn’t going to be resolved the way I thought it was also the moment I realised I should write about it,’ she states. So, Elena did walk the same streets everyday, like a ritual, wrote these songs in her head and tried to form them into proper music.

‘A lot of the songs are long rambling notes to myself. Like writing letters you don’t actually send. A pile of paper I never quite got the courage to put in an envelope. I was trying to find a way to say things I wanted to say, but couldn’t anymore. Things I was too proud to admit to thinking or feeling.’MORE

In the early 1970s, young Suzi Quatro made a huge splash in rock music, reaching the top of the charts in countries like England, Denmark, and Australia with glam-rock hits like “Can The Can” and “Devil Gate Drive.” The diminutive, leather-clad Quatro easily won over European audiences with her appealing stage presence as she expertly played a bass guitar almost as big as she was, commandeering her all-male backing band. Curiously, the Detroit native went relatively unnoticed in the U.S.; most Americans remember her now for her stint as Leather Tuscadero on the popular ’70s sitcom Happy Days and her mellow hit duet with Chris Norman, “Stumblin’ In.” Mainstream America may not have been playing close attention to the effervescent Quatro, but future rockers like Joan Jett, Cherie Currie (The Runaways), Debbie Harry (Blondie), and Kathy Valentine (The Go-Go’s) were.

Decades later, it seems Quatro is finally about to get her due in the rock annals as the first woman to front a successful rock band while playing an instrument. New documentary Suzi Q traces Quatro’s explosive career, starting out in an all-girl band with her sisters when she was just 14, then getting discovered and shipped to England only a few years later. Suzi Q offers a riveting, largely undiscovered chapter in rock music, exploring an artist who has sold 55 million records over the course of her long and successful career (which now also includes a number of stage musicals, programs on BBC Radio 2, and a series of books). A few days before , Quatro talked to The A.V. Club from her home in Hamburg, Germany, about being a rock groundbreaker, the secret to her infectious stage presence, and what life was like on the road with Alice Cooper. The now-70-year-old shows no signs of slowing down, still possessing the strong-willed self-confidence that helped her reach those musical heights in the first place.

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