About: Miranda Lee Richards
Miranda Lee Richards is a gifted Los
Angeles-based singer songwriter. Born in San Francisco after the summer of love
and before the dawn of disco, she grew up in an artistic and bohemian
environment that has informed her adult life and work. Her parents are
well-known underground comic book artists Ted Richards (Forty Year Old Hippy
and Dopin' Dan) and Terre Richards (Suzi Skates and Wimmen's Comix) -- R. Crumb
is their most famous contemporary.
After graduating from the San Francisco
School Of The Arts, she travelled to Paris to do some modelling, but soon
returned to the U.S. to pursue a musical career. A series of chance encounters
with influential people began when she became friends with Kirk Hammet from
Metallica who taught her to play guitar. Early demos of her songs reached the
ears of Anton Newcombe, and she soon joined his band The Brian Jonestown
Massacre. She sang on their early albums Give It Back, Bringing It all Back
Home Again, and Stung Out In Heaven, and appeared with them in the seminal
documentary DIG!.
In 2001, Virgin Records released her
full-length debut album the Herethereafter. The album was a mix of folk,
psychedelia, country and indie pop, and found fans worldwide, especially in
Japan where the single “The Long Goodbye” reached the top five.
Her critically-acclaimed sophomore album
Light of X, the title of which came from a dream about harnessing beams of
light to travel in time, followed in 2009 via Nettwerk Records. The music was a
progression from the template laid out on her debut album, anticipating the
symphonic pop music that came later with the likes of Anna Calvi and Agnes
Obel.
Richards’ latest album, Echoes Of The
Dreamtime, was recorded at her home studio with husband and producer Rick
Parker (best known for his work with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Lord
Huron). It brings together eight pastoral, atmospheric epics into a work that
is her most impressive yet. Echoes of the Dreamtime incorporates a more
lyrically narrative style, with many of the songs coming in at over five
minutes in length, with four and five verses a-piece. One song, the
eight-minute track "It Was Given" (based on the movie The White
Ribbon by Michael Haneke), is an example of an adaptation put to song.
As Richards states, “So much of our
experience lies within the realm of the subconscious, influencing our outer
realities. When we begin to realize we have control over our offering to the
world, we begin to examine the subconscious and have a conversation with it,
instead of being ruled unknowingly by it. Contained therein are themes of
self-discovery, transformation, and grappling with the duality between dark and
light within our selves and society. The literal use of Space Echo throughout
the album is reflective of the theme: it’s subtle and beautiful and repeats
until we listen.”
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