Aquarielle

Genre: Acoustic, Electronica, Pop, Pop/rock

[Ak-wear-ee-elle]

Derived from the French word Aquarelle, from obsolete Italian acquarella meaning water colour (diminutive of the Latin acqua, meaning water).

“Look famous, be legendary, appear complex, act easy, radiate presence, travel light, seem a dream, prove real.” – author unknown, adopted Aquarielle Mantra.

In early 2002, a boy producer leaves his home town in Wales in search of a fable - self, music, love and a girl vocalist.  The boy producer is introduced to girl vocalist through an intoxicated co-acquaintence.  The boy and girl trial the as yet un-tasted talents of the other in the boy’s bedroom studio and produce their first love child…a piano ballad cover of a 1980s Erasure hit. 

So-named because of the duo’s diametrically opposed backgrounds, Aquarielle is unashamedly a song-writing and production duo; an uncompromising creative force that has enveloped their sound in a blend of at once complimentary and contrasting musical colours hailing from the cerebral pigment palettes of these two somewhat complex personalities.

Not just a studio band, these guys are a working duo that doesn’t do anything by halves, reproducing live what some would say can only be created in a studio.

The Aquarielle sound is an eclectic fusion of melodic pop, jazz, funk, folk, tech-house, dance, electro, and anything else that may be missing from this sentence, complete with industriously layered vocal harmonies and melodic styles.  It’s the collective incarnation of its kooky counterparts who aren’t afraid to hit the earth at an obtuse angle. 

Determined to defy definition, Aquarielle toons and live shows have been described as theatrical, almost cabaret in their delivery.  Their repertoire includes numbers such as the sultry, slow-starter and blues-injected floor-filler Proverbial Push through to Thinking Star at the opposite end of spectrum, rooted in a more folk tradition with dual acoustic guitars, layered vocal harmonies and rounds (both featured as MP3 demos on this page).

The kaleidoscopic audio journey continues with a ‘noughty’ gyration to the tribal dance floor-oriented tech-house rhythms of Nothing Going On, the Latin infused Heard It All Before and pirouettes into a bygone era with the tech-driven waltz of the fairy tale inspired Little Matchstick Girl.

Delve into Ki and Dee’s histories and you’ll get the idea.  

STUFF ABOUT DAREN
First there’s Dee, self-styled producer with a dirty electro edge, vocalist, guitarist and keyboardist; otherwise known as ‘Da Fish’ from his former DJing existence in his Welsh homeland.  This boy is not adverse to living on the edge.  Dee saw the light back in ‘87 when he landed flat-backed on a rock following a spectacularly miscalculated Moto X jump that went belly up…literally.  After a fortnight of basic brain stem functionality in a semi-coma, he made the subconscious decision to give speed an alternative salute within the confines of a rally racing cage.   This brought national notoriety when in 1993 he won that year’s Welsh National Rally Championship, later ranking seventh in the British National Championships the following year.

Meanwhile the boy who’d been playing guitar and singing to the Welsh working club and holiday park public since the age of eleven, created a stage show extravaganza Erasure-ish – a tribute to the long time collaboration between his musical mentor Vince Clarke and Andy Bell. His flouncing antics on stage in a pair of lycra nicks, tank top and blonde spiked hair, won the  hearts of both sexes and the respect of the straight boys in the crowd who admired the courage of this very hetero-sexual ‘honorary gay’.

Then one day, Dee clicked his glitter-red doc heels three times and called Australia home. 

STUFF ABOUT KYLIE
It was in the Land of Oz where he met the other half of Aquarielle.  A life-long traveler who doesn’t believe in divvying the earth with imaginary lines, Ki spent four formative years prostrating to the higher mind (so the song goes) before traversing the European continent solo.  It was on this solitary journey she met with players, artists, clairvoyants, charlatans and didgeridoo wielding boy Gucci models. A chance encounter with French diva Mylene Farmer’s chief songwriter and guitarist, a run-in with Isabelle Huppert, and many friends and lovers later, she returned to etch these characters of her private world into her eternity through songs based on her experiences in love and war and her own unique view on the tumultuous and insecure psyche and often ugly underbelly of humankind.