- Seaming To

“…the voice of the 21st century…” Radio One

“..one of the most captivating, and unclassifiable, performers on the British music scene”

“Seaming To has made a world of her own somewhere between the graceful idiosyncrasies of Joanna Newsom, European art music…, electronica, jazz/improv, and the spaciousness of movie soundtracks. An astonishing vocalist of haunting emotional power” John Fordham
The Guardian

“Seaming To has an extraordinary presence, and creates songs as delicately nostalgic as an old photo” Ivan Hewett, Daily Telegraph

“Seaming’s vocal styling is impressively kaleidoscopic; haunting at times, vulnerable at others offering a desolate calm…both a moving and virtuoso conversion..”Clash Magazine

“Absolutely astounding four track EP that is totally original and will take you to places you’ve never been before. Her unique voice and musical arrangements create a sense of wide eyed magical wonder. Seaming To is going to be a star for all the right reasons.” MERMAID EP Dean Thatcher – ZZUBCHART

“When she sings, puts the rest of the band in the shade. A tiny woman with a pixie haircut and euphoric smile, To only has to open her mouth for her astounding, operatic voice to float out…Her singing is beautiful enough to make you wish the rest of the musicians would drop out of their groove for a moment.” The Guardian

AMELIA’S MAGAZINE review and interview

“Seaming To is a Chinese opera singer so has no place here on a rock blog, but I care not. Next month she releases an album where she crosses the border into commerciality and, without being cynical of such a move, she has produced a decent album, simply called ‘Seaming’. It’s a bit classical in places, ambient in others and difficult to stay with, but worthy of an attempt. If you’re into Björk, then this will appeal to you, as it clearly does to me.”
godisinthezine

“…To’s incredible voice. It is a dextrous wonder that captivates throughout the record, endlessly morphing and reshaping into different forms and sounds. From a soaring, operatic croon on Sodaslow (sipped), to the theatrical flourishes of Mermaid, to the powerful emoting of Vertigo Billy, it is a voice that is always pushed directly to the forefront of the music.

The musical backdrops that To creates for her voice are mostly subtle and restrained. Tracks like I’m Going To See bubble with swirling synths and skittering understated beats. There is a fluctuation throughout the album between traditional classical and jazz forms and more contemporary electronic sounds. The jumpy electronica of Bee, for example, has more akin with something on Warp records than classical music while Vertigo Billy marries the grandiosity of opera with the industrial crunch of Zola Jesus. It is a striking combination.

Throughout Seaming, you obtain an understanding of To’s musical background and influences, which are firmly rooted in classical and operatic music but also have strong kinship with areas of avant-garde performance art and electronica. To has few similar contemporaries. Much of Seaming is imbued with a sense of balletic grace. You can easily imagine songs like the ornate instrumental piano piece Deer soundtracking a ballet performance on a grand stage. Yet this performance quality is perhaps also the album’s biggest drawback. At times, you feel as if you are listening to the soundtrack of an opera or theatrical performance, and it is hard to form a real emotional attachment to these songs. The largely oblique lyrics do not help in this regard. These are no doubt hugely impressive musical pieces but the album is lacking in strong pop melodies.

It is churlish to complain so, mind, for To is anything but a pop star. Seaming is a record of rich textures and sounds that calls for complete immersion; it’s hard going at times but the rewards are ultimately plentiful. Final track Humid best sums up the album’s charms. What starts as a gentle music box melody accompanying To’s cooing vocal grows into an enormous swelling crescendo as you float off into a dream-like state carried on the waves of one of music’s most strikingly beautiful voices.” Musicomh

“…an extraordinarily beautiful voice and a real leftfield approach to her music”
The List Festival Magazine, Edinburgh

“…mystifying..is an intriguing artist..” Timeout

“Seaming has a massive voice. In fact the British-Chinese singer is operatically trained and boy can she play piano. This track Sodaslow (sipped) is soaring, otherworldly and frankly fantastic..”The Other Woman Music

“…the way that she marries jazz, opera and goth in such a discomforting but charming way. I can’t help but think that she may well have listened to as much Diamanda Galas in her youth as she has perhaps Billie Holiday..”The F Word

“It’s difficult to describe Seaming’s score and performance without getting submerged in superlatives. She is, basically, a total star, with the same creativity, talent and presence as some unique figures from Bjork to Grace Jones, early Annie Lennox or Laurie Anderson or (to choose from the current generation of new names) someone like Janelle Monae or La Roux. What was remarkable about her work with Meshes was its sheer variety, the layers of types of music, from haunting electro to soft live oboe broken by a frankly amazing operatic voice, all perfectly controlled and utterly present. Seaming is a musicians’ musician, a class act with wild capabilities. She did much more than accompany the action on the film – although this she did brilliantly, with exactly the right amount of humour, switching into all-out horror, histrionics, gore and spookiness. She gave us a performance and a composition of true originality, entertainment and independence. The variety of her talents as an instrumentalist, arranger and singer were encapsulated into this brief 14 minutes, but Seaming was undoubtedly the brightest spot of the evening. I would love to see her work more intensively with the film world; the seamless combination of stunningly original music with this intimidatingly excellent film was breathtaking to witness. “ BIDISHA

“Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon was brilliantly soundtracked by the multi-instrumentalist and composer, Seaming. I’ve probably seen Meshes fifty times (only twice by choice) and I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed it more. Seaming’s work was just minimal enough to bring the characters to life without overwhelming Deren’s oblique narrative. The problem, as alluded to above, is that when Seaming really got going and her performance matched the intensity of the images, it was almost impossible to keep from looking away from the screen to see the performance—which, it should be noted, was quite worth watching.” The Playground

“Seaming’s score for Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) further blurred the boundaries of naturalistic sync sound, drawing attention through an exaggerated live foley of dropped keys and scratchy record players to the film’s visual images of sound, from the fall of the key to the telephone off the hook to the lover’s whisper and the smash of the mirror. These sounds are the secret inner world of the film’s dreaming protagonist (played by Deren herself), and Seaming’s admixture of processed musical score (for voice, violin, bells and drone) and mimetic effects brings us into that (un)consciousness with immediacy. Hints of Angelo Badalamenti’s scores for David Lynch mingled with Diamanda Galas-like vocals, recalling the significance of the extraordinary female singing voice in Lynch’s films, its power – as here – to connect to something more primal and intimate than the image track. Breath, body and birdsong made Deren’s film spring to life even as the protagonist appears to die.” www.soundandmusic.org

“..Seaming utilising her unbelievable range of skills in a rich and measured response to Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon.” hideandseek

“The night kicked off with Seaming To’s innovative, loving accompaniment to Meshes of the Afternoon (1943 d. Maya Derren and Alexander Hammid). I was previously unfamiliar with the film, but found it well and truly fascinating”..”At no point were the film or its accompaniment rendered subservient to the aims of the other. Equipped with synthesizer, Macbook, clarinet and her signature vocal style, Seaming To used a series of haunting, ambient tones as a starting point, slowly and deliberately layering, manipulating and contorting them. Utilising her entire array of instruments to meander in and out of diegesis, she created a wall of sound as fluid and intangible as the film itself, carrying the audience up and down with the pulsing rhythms of the visuals, focussing and implementing us further and further into the images of madness projected onto the screen, hypnotising, transfixing and astounding all present. In short, it was a perfect fusion of image and sound and undoubtedly the finest example of film accompaniment I have ever witnessed.” CULTURE VULTURE

“Avant-garde opéra singer Seaming To is an alien siren on the atonal Exotics.”
Ian Gittins, The Guardian June 27, 2008

“Stay Tuned” showcasing the extraordinary voice and clarinet of Seaming To”
Andy Gill, The Independent 2007 (for Robert Wyatt’s Comic Opera)

“….To, switching from operatic virtuosity to wailing screech..” Financial Times (for ‘Songs from a Lost Piano”)

Homelife banshee Seaming To goes solo, her operatic vocals soaring
above the Simian bleeps and blips of electro monkey maestro James
Ford. It’s a complicated affair, as if Gary Numan had courted Liz
Fraser before dropping ‘Cars’, but this is a record loaded with
emotion and which packs plenty of dancehall thump amongst the
fluttering intricacies.” Kingsley Marshall –
International DJ (for Sodaslow EP)

“Weird and wonderful!” DJ Magazine

ESSENTIAL LEFTFIELD TUNE
“Coming from a family of trained musicians, it was only
natural for Seaming to follow the same path, first of all
studying at The Royal College Of Music in London, then
moving to Manchester to explore different vocal techniques
& do operatic studies at The Royal Northern College Of
Music. Did all this work and no play pay off ? You bet it
did, Seaming has got an extraordinary voice. As well as
being part of the band Homelife, Seaming has managed to do
a solo album, pulling in Graham Massey (808 State,
Toolshed, Homelife) & James Ford (Simian) on production.
“Soda Slow EP” is the first taster of what’s to come, and
the title track will leave you gob smacked, as Seaming’s
vocals soar & dip as they twist & turn, weaving their way
around racing drum machines & over the edge heartbroken
strings. “Soda Slow” comes with a couple of remixes &
bonus cut “Dreaming”, which comes over like Judy Garland
doing a silver screen siren number. I can honestly say
Seaming To is in a class of her own.” DEAN THATCHER DMC World Update (for Sodaslow EP)

“If the sleeve artwork for Seamings Tos debut solo release Sodaslow
simply depicted a picture of Manchesters finest avant garde
electro-Opera singer at at the bus stop eating a bag of crisps it
would be worth the entrance fee alone, but the fact that this
enigmatic slab of vinyl is packaged in what could arguably be one of
Manchester’s finest sleeves to grace this decades record racks almost
makes me want to save the audible part of this eagerly awaited release
for another sitting… but im greedy.
First brought to our attention as the front woman for twins of evil
supergroups Home life and Toolshed Seaming has always been in a league
of her very own, comparisons to Morricones right hand woman Edda
DellOrso or obscure European Jazz vocalists such as Ursula Dudziak
face redundancy when its quite clear that Mings grasp on electronic
music as well as contemporary classical music and pop is as tight as
any of her lesser spotted contemporarys. Sodaslow combines all of the
above facets in the form of a 3 and a half minute pulsating
morse-code-coda with a sewing machine bass line and some floral choral
arrangements with regal symphonix to boot – educing visions a Prague
summer with free Red Bull and vodka on tap. The cello and piano on
B-side Dreaming would make a perfect readymade soundtrack for the next
Quay Brothers film while Miss Tos voice repels ghosts and melts
snowmen at a thousand bloody paces. ANDY VOTEL

Posted on 22.10.2012
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