Joanne Robertson

With a lovely series of solo LPs, Joanne Robertson has become known for the lyrical drifting beauty of her music. The Lighter (Textile), Black Moon Days (Feeding Tube), Wildflower (Escho) and Painting Stupid Girls (World Music) have all been hailed as brilliant extensions of the avant garde wing of the femme-folk tradition. But Joanne is also a registered form-disrupter of the highest order, as she demonstrated early on with the Blood ‘n Feather collective.

She has also remained active with her friend, Dean Blunt, issuing the Walhalla LP (Textile) as a duo, and appearing on his recordings, the most recent being Black Metal 2 (Rough Trade), while a new experimental collaboration album with the artist Sidsel Meineche Hansen has just been issued by Tenderbooks - "an insane mix of songs and aktions" according to The Wire.

Over the years Joanne's collaborators have ranged from people like legendary experimental musician David Cunningham, Mica Levi, Jasper Baydala (Kool Music), composer Oliver Coates and onward, while her personal style ranges from wildly open-form chord-squall in the French free rock tradition to the nearly hermetic folk darkness of Sybille Baier. Having been long based in London, Joanne has now shifted her operational base to Glasgow, where the air is easier to breathe.