Addie Brik
Addie Brik is an American, Georgia born singer - songwriter living in London. She produces and composes her own work and has collaborated with artists as diverse as Plaid and The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Addie has traveled manifold paths towards creative ends: not that many students of Indian classical song (her teacher is the renowned vocalist Lakshmi Shankar) are writing tracks for Sex in the City. What she doesn't do is allow pigeonholing to dictate the music she creates. Her work cuts through the tough outer skin that is genre and dives deep into the heart of what is good music.
Addie discovered the beauty of poetry at a tender age. Reared in the steamy deep south, she started writing poetry while still a pre-teen. One night playing ping-pong at a sleepover party, her friends big sister put on 'California' by Joni Mitchell. An epiphany of sorts happened then: all the best things, music, literature, exotic places and faces could be focused into one artistic expression. All she had to do was wait to be old enough to leave home. This led to a place at the prestigious Naropa Institute where she was mentored by literary giants Steinbeck and Allen Ginsberg. Her motivation remains. Writing is the constant in her life.
The follow-up album to Addie's 2004's critically lauded Loved Hungry, Strike the Tent is the product of a long journey, both artistically and literally, borne out of the experience of living in Budapest for two years, and was recorded in Hungary and Transylvania. Strike the Tent is an exquisitely well-crafted album. As with its predecessor, there's a modicum of electronic soundscaping but is heightened by the use of a far broader palette of sounds and instrumentation, utilizing, Fiddle, Cimbalom, Koboz, Difonic Singing, Kanna Drums and the Budpaest Boys Choir.