Fr Records launches tonight at Kunstleben in Schneberg with a double headlining line-up of their first two sgnees, Forest & Crispian and Sam Gray Singing who releases his debut album today also.
Forest & Crispian have always been known for delivering a live set beyond the usual. With rebuilt and homebuilt instruments, standing drums and tremendous vocal harmonies they deliver an experience that has been refered to as a blend between the works of Spike Jones, Sophia Coppola, The Band and Scott Walker. And this time around they will be even better.
Sam Gray, born in 1977 in New Zealand, Samuel began receiving classical piano training from his aunt from the age of 7. Treated as a human jukebox because of his natural ability to accurately play pieces of music by ear, Samuel wrote his earliest music at age 8. Samuel took up percussion, violin and trumpet lessons and taught himself to play the guitar, though he continued to be known predominantly as a pianist. He recorded his first full-length album, Catharsis at age 16. Having shown unusual prowess in languages at high school, Samuel moved to Oslo, Norway on a student exchange in 1996 and stayed there to attend university, majoring in modern European languages until 2003, when he moved (again on a student exchange!) to Austria. He currently lives in Vienna. Click on his name up there for a couple of songs.
Here’s a review of Sam’s Songs About Humans album:
I don’t often give albums the maximum rating, yet for this one, it sadly seems too little to describe all the magic and wonders you will encounter here. Most great records today have impeccable songwriting and the right attitude to touch your heart, but Songs About Humans has even more. Sam Gray Singing is not only an incredibly gifted musician, but he also realised the quasi impossible by creating something totally unique”…
Here’s Forest & Crispian:
