
GAZELLE TWIN |||
A
BIOGRAPHY BY GARRY MULHOLLAND
What do Arnold
Schwarzenegger, Prince, a shapeshifting creature called Loplop and an insane
16th century Italian composer who wrote madrigals about murdering his wife all
have in common? They all, in some strange but crucial way, inhabit the unique
world of Gazelle Twin.
Gazelle Twin is the nom de plume of Brighton singer, composer, performer and
genius Elizabeth Walling. And the parts that the above notables play in the
planet of sound and vision that she has constructed using little but a laptop
and her imagination pay tribute to the range and scope of her ambitions. Getting
bored of quirky, attention-grabby girls trying so desperately hard to be the
kookiest new Bjork/Madonna/Siouxsie/Winehouse clone on the block? Good. Because
Gazelle Twin’s debut album, The Entire City (release details tba), is what you’ve been waiting for.
Gazelle Twin’s music is dark, erotic, immersive, spooked and equally suffused
with dread and adventure. Her fascination for early choral music (that would be
the part that uxoricidal choral composer Carlo Gesualdo plays) provides the
layers of Elizabethan harmonies that give the songs their ghostly wonder. Her
love of classic sci-fi movie soundtracks, and especially the murky analogsynths
and epic chords fashioned by Brad Fiedel for The Terminator (there’s Arnie!),
informs the inky black texture of the Gazelle Twin sound. Elizabeth sets out to
create beats that are as satisfying to experience as those found on Purple Rain
and Parade (hence the Prince presence and her bravura cover of I Wonder U). And
the album’s title and the extraordinary Gazelle Twin look is inspired by
surrealist painter and sculptor Max Ernst, whose folklore-based changeling
creature Loplop is re-interpreted by Elizabeth for her birdlike costume design.
See? It all makes a sensual kind of (seventh) sense.
Elizabeth’s journey to the here and the now began with artist parents and an
early fascination with music that led her to learn a variety of instruments to a
level that enabled her to study music in Brighton. She became an accomplished
classical composer, earning a number of ‘world premieres’. As Elizabeth explains
wryly, ‘World Premiere is archaic muso-speak for a first performance which is
designed to make even the most insignificant amateur performance sound good.’
Despite an Arts Council commission to soundtrack a documentary on anabandoned
lunatic asylum, and taking part in a project to write classical music for the
Cargo nightspot alongside the wonderful Micachu, Elizabeth found herself
gradually losing faith in the more traditional contemporary classical events.
'They were usually in fusty old churches or tired music halls where the
demographic was very rarely young composers, especially female ones,' she
recalls, with a shudder. Armed with a continued passion for composing and for
classical music, Elizabeth withdrew from traditional methods and turned to her
childhood dreams of forming a band and performing as a singer.
The resulting conversion to pop saw her form A Scandal In Bohemia with some of
her college classmates in 2006. Undoubtedly Brighton's greatest lost talent, A
Scandal made outrageous, freewheeling noise combining prog, free jazz, dark folk
and pop; baffling, charming and freaking out their small-but-loyal group of
admirers in turn. A Scandal in Bohemia ended when Elizabeth left the band in
2009 to concentrate on the altogether more focussed art of Gazelle Twin.
Elizabeth intends Gazelle Twin to be an ever-changing project that allows her
total creative freedom and versatility. To this end, she is designing an
ambitious stage show that you’ll never see third on the bill at the local
Barfly; a show that uses costume, lighting, nine virtuoso musicians and
influences ranging from Paul Auster, J.G. Ballard, existentialism and
eschatology to Fever Ray, Portishead and Dirty Projectors to create a visual
equivalent to the melancholy and mysterious beauty of The Entire City. She
promises ‘an immersive, audio-visual experience, very different from a usual
“gig” vibe – more like a film with a live soundtrack or theatre show.’
In a contemporary milieu where even X Factor contestants get to call themselves
‘artists’, Gazelle Twin makes no apology for being Art, with a big old capital
‘A’. Her vision is uncompromising, vivid and unpredictable, and her potential as
performer, singer, composer and visual stylist is limitless.
Every now and again, a genius arrives, seemingly out of nowhere. Elizabeth
Walling aka Gazelle Twin is one of those rarities, taking her first giant steps
on the road to everywhere.
Garry Mulholland
October 2009