Loene Carmen

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Loene Carmen (born 1970, Adelaide, Australia) is an Australian singer/songwriter and actress.

Contents

[edit] Background

Carmen's father is well known rock/jazz/blues pianist Peter Head. He has played piano in several of Carmen's bands, including acting as musical director for country revue act Honky Tonk Angels, which also featured Justine Clarke and Noah Taylor.

As a teenager, Carmen was discovered working in a Kings Cross pizza bar and cast in John Duigan's The Year My Voice Broke (1987) for which she was nominated for an Australian Film Institute Best Actress award. Other notable roles include Sallie-Anne Huckstepp in the docudrama Blue Murder and Christine in Alkinos Tsilimidos' haunting drama Tom White, for which she also received nominations for Australian Film Institute Best Supporting Actress and IF Best Actress.

After performing in a variety of bands since the early 1990's, Carmen went solo in 2002 with debut album Born Funky Born Free (Chiquita) - 'a femme-fatale fronted Hendrix/Velvet Underground freaky reggae dub party'[1].

[edit] Attributes

In 2004, the minimalist Slight Delay was released to minor critical acclaim on Reverberation, the label run by Rusty Hopkinson of You Am I fame - described by Plan B as “Velveteen vocals bubble through a pool of Barbarella’s matmos, backlit by Ry Cooder on mescaline, Tortoise-style keys and somnolent beats...Loene Carmen inspires devotion from hardcore bikers to art-house boys. Slight Delay cements the myth in cherry red lipstick.[2]"

Third album Rock N Roll Tears, co written and recorded with The Mess Hall's Jed Kurzel and The Holy Soul's Sam Worrad, attracted standout reviews, variously described as 'hazy, staggering outsider blues', '…sinfully sexy songs that stay simmering on a low desert heat... a lo fi rock n roll/blues tour de force” (Indie Album of the Week, The Brag) and 'gauzy, tear-soaked blues noir...deliciously dark, sexy and dead cool' (mess&noise).

"I guess I’ve got a bit bigger and braver each time - Born Funky was basically recorded alone in my bedroom, still trying to work out how to use the machine I recorded on and most of the tracks written and recorded simultaneously...for Slight Delay I had a pretty good home studio setup, by my standards anyway, and a tiny little room, which I think really impacted on the 'intimate' sound of that record - when Jed and Warren did their parts it was a matter of setting 'em up, shutting the door and waiting in the kitchen while they did their thing...it was all pretty haphazard in a way and we just recorded a bunch of stuff and then whittled it down to what worked together .. then finally with RnRTears it was a big affair with us all traipsing out the country, knowing what songs were gonna be recorded, having a professional (Jordan Brebach) to record them well which left me to concentrate on getting the performance right instead trying to work out what buttons to push....and it was really inspiring to be working with a whole band who just knew precisely where to take a song without a word being spoken...Atmospherically I had key words of 'dirt and air and heat and night' that I somehow wanted to capture in all of the songs. I like to think of this album as a love song to rock n roll...all of my songs are love songs to something or other, its all I can write.” [3]

It Walks Like Love, album number four, is due for release end of 2009. Radio singles Oh Apollo! and Mimic The Rain have been released.

Carmen currently tours solo or accompanied by members of The Scare and The Holy Soul.

She has also toured with Warren Ellis and Jim White from the Dirty Three. Carmen toured Europe solo as opening act for Bad Seed Mick Harvey in 2006. In 2009 she showcased solo at both SxSW and Canadian Music Week.


'Nashville High' and 'Rock n Roll Tears' were featured tracks on Australian series Love My Way[4].

'Born Funky Born Free' featured in film Fat Pizza.

Carmen has contributed music writing to anthologies Meanjin on Rock 'n' Roll: All Yesterday's Parties[5] (edited by Mark Mordue) and Your Mother Would be Proud: True Tales of Mayhem and Misadventure (edited by Jenny Valentish & Tamara Sheward)[6]

[edit] Discography

  • Loene Carmen:It Walks Like Love 2009
  • Loene Carmen:Rock 'n' Roll Tears 2007
  • Loene Carmen:Slight Delay'' 2004
  • Loene Carmen:Born Funky Born Free 2001
  • The Charismatics: Fateful Gaze ep 1998
  • Automatic Cherry: Slow Burner 1996

[edit] Guest artist

[edit] Selected filmography

[edit] Music Videos

  • Mimic The Rain 2009
  • Nashville High 2006
  • The Things That Matter 2004
  • My Friends Call Me Foxy 2002

Appeared on ABC music quiz show Spicks & Specks Episode 8 [7]

[edit] Awards and nominations

  • 1987 Australian Film Institute Awards nomination for Best Actress (The Year My Voice Broke)
  • 2004 Australian Film Institute Awards nomination for Best Supporting Actress (Tom White)
  • 2004 Inside Film Awards nomination for Best Actress (Tom White)
  • 2004 Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards nomination for Best Supporting Actress (Tom White)

[edit] Band history

  • Slow Hand (c. 2000 - 2005)
  • Loene Carmen Experience (c. 2000)
  • Automatic Cherry (c. 1995 - 1998)
  • The Charismatics (c. 1996 -1998)
  • White Trash Mamas (c. 1993 - 1995)
  • HonkyTonk Angels (c. 1991-1993)

[edit] Further information

Carmen has a son, Dutch Bon (b. 2007), with partner, well known actor Aden Young and a daughter, Holiday Sidewinder (b. 1990).

Together, Young and Carmen have turned the archetypal struggling artist idea into an artform; Carmen once hocked 30 of her favourite vinyl records to buy Young a hat. Carmen has written songs about her man, “and we’re constantly trying to kick each other around, to be better”[8].


[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.antifear.net/loenecarmen/discs.html
  2. ^ http://www.antifear.net/loenecarmen/discs.html
  3. ^ http://www.thedwarf.com.au/nd/interviews/loene_carmen_no_more_tears
  4. ^ http://www.australiantelevision.net/lovemyway/music.html
  5. ^ Meanjin on Rock \ Volume 65, No. 3, 2006: http://www.meanjin.unimelb.edu.au/back_issue_2006_3.htm
  6. ^ ISBN:9781741756500 Publisher: ALLEN & UNWIN http://www.yourmotherwouldbeproud.com.au/
  7. ^ http://www.tv.com/spicks-and-specks/show/35614/episode.html?printable=1
  8. ^ http://www.stevedow.com.au/Article/article.asp?id=416
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