Chinawoman

Chinawoman Live Show @ Block33

Chinawoman + live crew
Opening Act: Sonny Touch & Honolulu Philharmonic

Chinawoman’s latest single, To Be With Others (2012), marks her first release since her move from Toronto to Berlin just over a year ago, and continues in the sultry, emotional and matter-of-fact style established in her two full-length albums. Driven by a subterranean beat, dark synths, and signature deep vocals, the new single comes paired with a music video atypically featuring the songwriter herself, in black and white, delivering the monologue in an East-Berlin motel.

Tragicomic, melody-driven, sentimental and suspended in a shadowy glamour, Chinawoman’s songs “manoeuvre between grandiose retro motifs and a surprising sincerity” (music.com.ua). Her debut album, Party Girl (2007), by some fateful unknown hand was delivered to the land of her forefathers, and her music can now be heard blaring regularly from the yachts of Russian billionaires, elitist Lithuanian tea parties, Moscow fashion runways and the ringtones of mothers all over the Ukraine.

Raised in the Russian hood of Toronto, the daughter of a Kirov ballerina and an engineer from Leningrad grew up listening to her parents’ collection of Soviet and 70’s European records. Her second album Show Me The Face (2010), indulged towards classical European balladry, making clear the foundations of her style. Decadent, dramatic and earnest, melodies remain simple but precise, vintage keyboards and synth strings offer the solitary rendition of a grand experience, and the voice always upfront delivers motifs familiar yet impossible to pinpoint from the great soup of European chanson. A genre based partly on elements of melody and style, but moreso, a signature fatalistcelebratory approach to songwriting.

Chinawoman has drawn comparisons to Nico and Leonard Cohen, Soviet era singing stars such as early Alla Pugacheva, with a voice akin to Tanita Tikaram. Her move to Berlin marked a major turning point for Chinawoman as a live act, from playing smaller shows in Toronto to regularly selling out concerts of 400-800 guests in cities like Istanbul, Bucharest, Belgrade and Moscow. Having signed with Berlin-based agency Moutique (Do Make Say Think, The Hidden Cameras, Death Cab For Cutie), 2011 became her first major touring year and began the evolution from a bedroom recording project to fulfilling concert requests by enthusiastic European listeners. The 2011 Seeking Russian Bride Tour was followed by supporting Patrick Wolf’s European dates, and found her listenership expanding west with dates in Italy, Greece, Turkey and The Netherlands.

Resistance to the charming magic of Chinawoman is in vain… she doesn’t
resemble anyone living and is so remote from the world that one desires to
believe recklessly: she exists.
– Felix Sandalov, writer for Billboard Magazine

Her music evokes images of Soviet Ballrooms of the 80s and Douglas Sirk
melodramas, and she’s been compared to Leonard Cohen, Nico,
and Angelo Badalamenti. But for all the grandiosity, you wouldn’t expect
that both her albums were produced and recorded in her bedroom.
– Stil in Berlin

Mysterious, twisted and lush.
– Kevin Hegge, Now Magazine

From the first note unceremoniously grabs the soul—that same melancholy
that always finds resonance in the Russian heart—and never lets go.
—Andrei Buharin (4 stars) Rolling Stone

chinawoman.ca
youtube.com/user/chinavoomen
twitter.com/chinavoomen
myspace.com/chinawoman

Tickets Presale

Ticket House | 102 Mitropoleos, +30 2310 264880
Rover Bar | 6 Salaminos,  +30 2310 544304
Stereodisc Record Shop | 4 Aristotelous Sq, +30 2310 262912
Mr Jones Café | 23 Dim. Gounari +30 2310 257379
E-tickets | chinawoman.eventbrite.com