User talk:Jamieli

Satinder Kaur
Satinder Kaur in 2010
Background information
Birth name	Satinder Kaur
Born	(1985-08-08) August 8, 1985 Manchester, England
Genres	Ambient Art pop Art rock Experimental rock Hip hop IDM Progressive rock R&B
Occupation(s)	Musician, actress, writer
Instrument(s)	Vocals, bass guitar, guitar, violin, dhol
Years active	2005–present
Labels	XL Recordings

Satinder Kaur (Punjabi: ਸਤਿੰਦਰ ਕੌਰ, born August 8, 1985) is an English musician, actress, writer and member of the creative collective Rrrrrrr. Musically with Rrrrrrr, she plays bass guitar, violin, and dhol.

She won the 2009 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Aqsa in Beloved Pet Of The Carnivore, and was nominated for the 2015 Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Prachi Desai in The Whole Monkey (eventually losing to Julianne Moore).

Biography

Early years

Kaur was born in Manchester to ethnic Punjabi Sikh parents, as the younger sister to two identical twin brothers; her father was born and raised in Manchester while her mother was born and raised in Bradford, and she grew up in Levenshulme. Her mother was a music teacher and her father ran a computer repair and sales store. She first attended Longsight Community Primary School then Whalley Range 11-18 High School. She was taught how to sing and play violin and keyboards from a young age by her mother, while her uncle taught her to play the dhol.

She began playing the bass after both of her older brothers asked for guitars as presents in 1994. Her main inspiration was Peter Hook of Joy Division and New Order, with "She's Lost Control" being the first song she learned how to play on bass. Later she became enamoured with the work of Les Claypool of Primus. Through her teens, Kaur recorded hundreds of instrumental compositions on her computer, mostly inspired by eithclassical music or Frank Zappa; many of these compositions would later be used for Rrrrrrr tracks (an example being the track "Come Out The Culprit" which was entirely harmonically based on a piece written by Kaur in 1998). Outside of music, she also pursued a multitude of other interests, which she says was "50% things I did because I didn't have any friends, and 50% things I did that led to me having no friends". Most of these were, like her beginning to play the bass, due to her very close relationship with her two older brothers, as she "since I was 5 years old I just copied everything they did.". These interests included computer science and video games (which for Kaur then led to her becoming a committed Japanophile, including becoming fluent in Japanese). Kaur's two older brothers, Sanjit Singh and Sabar Singh, would later join the Rrrrrrr collective in late 2005, and the three siblings are largely responsible for Rrrrrrr's video game studio Spillmacht.

Rrrrrrr

After secondary school, Kaur chose to attend the University of Glasgow where she would study mathematics and music. She chose to study in Glasgow mostly as a result of her close friendship with future Rrrrrrr colleague and native Glaswegian Samina Akhtar, who she had met online in 2002 and who she would share an apartment with in Glasgow (along with Akhtar's best friend Lejla Kahrimanovic). By their late teens, Kaur, Akhtar and Kahrimanovic were all proficient multi-instrumentalists with a fondness for IDM acts such as Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Autechre and Venetian Snares (Kaur & Akhtar had met online after Kaur attempted to download Squarepusher's 1998 Radio 1 Breezeblock mix from Akhtar on "a popular peer-to-peer filesharing program"), and the trio began recording records in that style in late 2003 under the name Girl Scout Heroin (a pun on Gil Scott-Heron); these recordings were originally only distributed through their Soundclick and Myspace accounts, but were eventually given an "official" release online by Rrrrrrr in

Musicianship

Kaur's vocal style has been described as "astoundingly versatile", with her vocals ranging from a atonal sneer reminiscent of John Lydon to a sweet, cooing Punjabi akin to Surinder Kaur, to "poetic Mancunian derision (which) recalls both Morrissey and Mark E. Smith".

Her confrontational stage presence, in which she never handles the microphone and frequently turns away from the audience for long periods, has been compared to Liam Gallagher, though Kaur has said this is a coincidence and that Oasis are "the worst fucking kind of shite"; she has also said that her tendency to turn away from the crowd is more because she wants to be with her bandmate Sarah Zakeri, who

Personal life

Kaur has described herself as paradoxically both a Sikh and an atheist:

You have to believe in one single God in Sikhism but unlike Islam or Christianity or whatever it's not specified what that actually means, because such specification isn't really required. God in Sikhism is a MacGuffin really. [...] I'm definitely a Sikh and also definitely an atheist, and I couldn't possibly give less of a fuck what people want to think about that.

On Rrrrrrr's forum, Kaur has also described herself as "a Sikh Spinozist who hates [[ps]hytrance]]".

Kaur was a Manchester City fan who from the age of 11 regularly attended matches with her brothers, father and uncle as a season ticket holder. However, since the takeover of the club in 2008 by Abu Dhabi United Group and the subsequent vast spending that led to their eventually winning the Premier League in 2012 and 2014, Kaur has said she has "no interest in them anymore; I suppose I may have interest again in some point in the future but not now, when it's like cheering for a fucking spreadsheet."

As well as English, Kaur can speak fluent Punjabi, Hindi, Japanese, French, and Arabic. For her role in Beloved Pet Of The Carnivore she learnt basic Urdu, but did not continue learning beyond what was needing for the film as she "didn't see the point in learning a language where the only people you can talk to with it are Pakistanis".

Equipment

• Warwick Streamer Stage 1 (main bass, with Khana sticker)
  
• Rickenbacker 4003
• Warwick Corvette Fretless
• Warwick Alien Fretless
• Ibanez GSR 200 (her first bass)
• Warwick amps & heads
• MXR M234 chorus pedal
• Raygun FX fuzz pedal
• VOX StompLab IB effects pedal
• Line 6 Tonecore constrictor/compressor pedal
• Boss RC-1 Loop Station