(MusicPortal.com) (07/21/05)

Edited By Michael Bennett

LONDON, UK - Singer/songwriter KT TUNSTALL's debut album, "Eye To The Telescope," has just been acknowledged with one of the most prestigious musical accolades available within the UK - a nomination for this year's Mercury Music Prize.

This stands Tunstall shoulder-to-shoulder with other artists such as Coldplay, Bloc Party, MIA & Kaiser Chiefs in contention for the award - the winner of which will be announced on September 6th.

Critical praise for "Eye To The Telescope" has been substantial from the moment it was released in the UK on January 10th.

It's been a year of opportunity and great timing for Scotland-based KT Tunstall.

Early on came a last minute offer to perform on UK music platform "Later With Jools Holland," on which she pulled no punches and defiantly and confidently debuted both her musical talent and album lead single 'Black Horse And The Cherry Tree' on national TV.

From there, Tunstall began to seize her moment in the spotlight.

In addition to her UK dominance, KT Tunstall is also fast gaining an international presence as a Top 20 seller in France, while experiencing Top 20 airplay in countries like Ireland, Italy, Brazil and Chile as well.

"Eye To The Telescope" has also been released in Australia, Singapore, Mexico and other territories recently, the album currently standing just shy of the 500,000 mark in sales worldwide.

EMI Music Canada have also just announced that they will release the album in the Canadian territories on September 20th.

Tunstall will be in Canada over early August to cover promotional media, and perform an exclusive, invite-only solo showcase at The Drake Underground on August 8th in Toronto.

A confirmed appearance on Canada AM has also been locked in for August 9th, while Montreal will host Tunstall in market August 9th-10th.

Canadian tour dates are also expected to follow in the coming months.

KT Tunstall is a songstress with Chinese blood, a Scottish heart, great legwarmers and a cool name. "Well, it's got a bit more attitude than Kate, which just says farmer's daughter to me," she laughs.

She celebrates classic singer-songwriting in the tradition of Rikki Lee Jones, Carole King and Fleetwood Mac with an articulate, accessible, immediate brew of rootsy sass, wistful quandary and after-hours atmosphere.

The latest in a line of outstanding contemporary Scottish artists including Texas, Teenage Fanclub and The Beta Band, KT Tunstall's unique perspective offers a rare emotionally connecting intensity through it's gripping lyrical bite and heartfelt melody.

She grew up in the university town of St Andrew's ("beautiful but sheltered, a little bubble"), always knowing she had been adopted at birth.

"I grew up knowing I could have had a million different lives. It makes your life mysterious and your imagination go wild."

"Eye To The Telescope" is the creative consequence of that inquiring imagination.

"My songs examine and explore little specific emotions or situations or stories," she explains.

"They're kitchen table songs, like a conversation between me and one other person."

"It's almost like an alien has been sent to get emotional samples from human beings and put it all together on a record."

KT Tunstall spent her childhood up hills and under canvas with her outward-bound parents.

Music was never really part of the equation until her older brother discovered the joys of hair metal. "I would sit outside his room and record his music through his door."

Her first album was the "Never Ending Story" soundtrack, but her favorite, reassuringly, is David Bowie's "Hunky Dory."

"It's sound really touched my love for songwriting and spacey stuff," she says.

"I was really into sci-fi books as a kid. My dad is a physicist, and he used to take my brothers and I into his lab when we were little. We played games with liquid nitrogen and Van Der Graaff generators."

He had the keys to the observatory at St Andrew's University, and he'd get us up in the middle of the night to show us Halley's Comet."

"That's partly why the album is called 'Eye To The Telescope.'"

A young and active KT Tunstall took up piano, then flute and gradually her singing voice developed its earthy individuality.

"I'm pretty certain that I learned how to sing, because someone gave me an Ella Fitzgerald tape. She was, in a sense, my singing teacher."

By her mid-teens, KT Tunstall had started writing her own songs, "but I was just coming out with this schmaltzy love nonsense. It was a complete vomit of puppy love. But I thought I was rocking."

At 16, she took up the guitar, teaching herself from a busker's book. Schmaltz was junked, and a musical epiphany ensued.

Hungry for experiences and independence, she gained a scholarship to the Kent School in the state of Connecticut in the United States, absorbing gigs by the likes of The Grateful Dead and 10,000 Maniacs.

She also formed her first band, The Happy Campers, and played a host of informal gigs.

"By the second week of playing an open mic slot, I was their 'special guest from Scotland!'," she recalls.

Next stop on KT Tunstall's personal odyssey was a music course at Royal Holloway College, where she tried and failed to form another band.

"I managed to win Battle Of The Bands with one mandolin player! It was me and eleven goth bands, and I won."

After vanquishing the goths, KT returned to St. Andrews and became immersed in the grassroots scene which spawned The Beta Band and the Fence Collective, forming a group with Fence's Pip Dylan and honing her tastes with an ambrosial diet of James Brown, Lou Reed, Billie Holliday, Johnny Cash and PJ Harvey.

A few years and bands later, it was crunch time for KT Tunstall. She hit London again where, finally, things started to fall into place.

Working relationships were forged and deals were secured.

She began writing projects with Swedish songwriter/producer Martin Terefe and London-based Orcadian Jimmy Hogarth and London's Tommy D.

With over a hundred songs in her pocket, Tunstall began work on "Eye To The Telescope" with a new band and highly regarded producer Steve Osborne at the helm.

"Steve was producer and engineer - he did everything," Tunstall says.

"He even invited me to stay with him and his family so we could work longer. We recorded the album in this gnarly little studio in the woods in Wiltshire."

"It was this disabled guy's house. The vocal booth was the wheelchair ramp between his bedroom and the control room."

"So you could either sing going downhill or uphill. It was perfect, so raw."

"He's got this little shack in the garden where all the local bands rehearse. It was like 'Deliverance.'"

Minus the psychopathic locals, however. And no "dueling banjos" either.

"I didn't want to take too much equipment into the studio, because it's when you have to be inventive that you get interesting music."

"Tom Waits said if you want something to sound like a cardboard box being hit with a boot, then hit a cardboard box with a boot."

This lo-fi, visceral, boot-wielding approach was inspired by KT Tunstall's recent conversion to the hiss and crackle of early Blues.

"On the whole, I'm a positive, skippity-la-la person. But I love the dark side of music and I will always want to explore that."

"'Eye To The Telescope' is a positive-sounding album, but there's stuff underneath for sure."

Since completing her debut, life for Tunstall has been a blur of gigs - first as support to Joss Stone, then a tour of Europe, singing with Klezmer Hip-Hop band Oi Va Voi, who ignited the Avalon Stage at Glastonbury.

"It was blazing sunshine, and I went on in a turquoise neck muff, glamorous dress and muddy boots and just had the best gig, really emotional."

"I've had emails from people saying that they cried. They promised it wasn't the drugs."

Now KT Tunstall is raring to channel all her infectious energies into her own music.

"I'm not exactly sure what has driven me so hard," she says.

"I've never questioned it. I've never had a back-up plan. I was never going to do anything else."

Copyright 2004-2010 Internet Music Media. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

---

[ Top ]