Sound & Vision with Camille Christel

The latest single from Camille Christel appears this week. Taken from her forthcoming EP, Goldsmith Street is out on Wednesday through Dalliance Records.

Goldsmith Street follows her last single, Chicago, and alongside three other tracks – including previous singles, Copenhagen and New York, will make up her debut EP – due out in January 2020.

To mark the release of the new single, we caught up with Nottingham native – who this year has worked with members of Sigur Ros, Spiritualized, Kelly Lee Owens and Daniel Avery – to find out what makes her tick in the world of film, music and literature. These are her Sound & Vision picks:

Three albums that I love:

Bon Iver – Bon Iver 

This album takes me back to being a young child on long summer drives to France with my family. We would spend hours listening to this album on repeat at full volume; it became the soundtrack to so many memories and symbolised a feeling of escape from reality for a few weeks. Every time I listen back to this album, I am transported to precious fleeting moments – salty air, beach BBQs, sunset skies and a feeling where I can almost touch the happiness shared between my family and friends. This album takes me back to moments of my adolescence where I felt free. Despite this album being so nostalgic and sentimental to me, it is also a musical masterpiece. It inspired a lot of my very early songwriting – especially the odd and interesting phrasing. On this album, he began to use words, moments and sounds, which started to push boundaries that most artists at that time didn’t dare to break. Choruses are euphoric and explode into a symphony of heartbreak and pain in the most beautiful way. Bon Iver makes everybody feel slightly less alone.

Cat Power – The Greatest

Cat Power has been on repeat in my brain since forever. Without a doubt The Greatest album would be playing loud in my family home on most sunny Sundays as a child. Like an old friend who has been guiding me, The Greatest is a collection of songs which have never left my side.

In 2016, I saw her headline End of the Road Festival and she blew my mind. She captured the crowd leaving everybody silent, spellbound and believing in every word she sang. She has not only inspired me to be a strong woman in the music industry, but this album has influenced how I write my music. The simplicity and bravery of her songs are astonishing; none of the instrumentation distracts from the words and stories which I feel is so important.

Frank Ocean – Blond 

I feel that Frank Ocean broke the rules, broke them again and then created new ones with this album.

It appeared to change and marked a shift in how popular music was listened to; it affected and changed the tastes of the mainstream. Tracks like Nights and Nikes have become essential classics to me as they have to many others.

White Ferrari is a song that I had on repeat for months; the way Ocean structures his songs, melodies and words are unlike anything else. He is honest, doesn’t hide from the dark truth of life, complex relationships, culture, heartache and the worst pain the the world.

Music can unite people and for a few moments after this was released, it truly felt like so many different people from different backgrounds came together and listened with open ears.

A favourite book:

Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes – Viv Albertine

I struggle to put into words what this book means to me as it has had such a major influence on me, I find it nearly impossible to translate this into words. I have been continuously reading this book since the age of fourteen and cried again when I finished it this summer. Not one book has ever made me feel this way. Viv Albertine taught me how to fight, how to be strong and how to not to care at all what anybody else will think of me ever. It has empowered me to wear whatever I desire and to sing about whatever I feel, no matter how personal and painful. This book is about how the music you listen to, the clothes you wear, the people you know and the decisions you make will eventually make you who you are. Even if these are all terrible decisions!

Reading this book feels like an instruction manual for life and how to be a young woman in the music industry.

A film that means a lot:

American Honey 

This film perfectly captures a moment of time in your when you are young- the lost years, where you have no idea who you are or who you want to be. Music is the main glue throughout which bonds the characters together and gives them hope; it heightens and crystalises moments and emotions. The soundtrack is something I listened to on repeat after seeing this movie – it is fantastically  curated and an extremely powerful selection of tracks.

This film can relate to anybody in any way. It shows you the raw, gritty and murky reality of relationships in your adolescent years with your partners and your friends. Longing to belong somewhere, to somebody in someplace but we never really find it.

A song that’s important to me:

The XX – Angels

Like a pair of lips whispering into your ear, telling you all their secrets, all their thoughts. This song couldn’t be any more intimate and precious, it beautifully expresses that exquisitely painful and perfect moment of falling in love with somebody who is so far out of reach. Every time I listen it feels as though you are falling in love all over again.

I have been a fan of the XX for years; I saw them play in Nottingham a few years ago. You could feel the whole energy of the room shift when this song was played; a feeling of euphoria, intimacy and hope swept across the room, something I don’t think I will experience again anytime soon.

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