The artistic musical collective known as Natalie Pryce have finished production on their second album: titled, 'Vol. II: the Ascent from Ego to Ego'. The album is a further and deeper exploration down the rabbit hole of their individual neo-noir music. The band's style has been described as having "purpose and drive wrought into every heartwrenching note" by Elaine O’Connor (The Scotsman). The music combines the echoes of early rock 'n' roll with post-modern narrative based storytelling set upon the tense soundscapes of their imagined dream/nightmare world. 

The album was financed entirely through crowdfunding. Completed over the course of only three days the album was recorded completely in analogue at Glasgow's legendary Green Door Studios. The producer was cult-hero, Samuel Joseph Smith (Casual Sex, Mother & The Addicts). Utilising the studio's unique recording equipment meant that the whole album fizzes and crackles with an effervescent energy. Critical to the band's style is their commitment to recording entirely in analogue and in one single take on the first day in the studio. This gives the record a warmth and soul quite distinct from many contemporary recordings. Blood, sweat, semen, tears, wild uncontrollable rages, splattered everywhere, this is how Natalie Pryce makes an album. The critics have recognised this ability and have noted "Their delivery and ambiance give a fresh air to modern rock n roll...they are the new energy the 21st century missed" (Juiliette Carnejac, Ravechild). There are influences of jazz, blues and punk rock but what the band do so artfully is to take these once familiar tones and mill and distort them through their rare imagination. 

Described as "individually compelling" by Ross Watson (the Skinny) their songs are born through an imagination filled with Freudian symbols and Jungian archetypes, cult cinema, fairy-tales, classic literature, high art and low art. With their music Natalie Pryce have created a world to slip into: a world with raging hallucinatory characters and impossible nocturnal cities where magick is real and reality is never taken at face value. Lead Singer Mark Swan had this to say about the imminent release: "'Vol II: The Ascent from Ego to Ego' is Natalie Pryce's manifesto, it's music about life, death, love, sorrow, sex, dreams and insanity. It's nothing less than the shape of art to come."

Edith

Frank Sinatra

Vaughan

Søren

The artistic musical collective (or band) known as Natalie Pryce have released their first album.  The debut, called ‘…and other tales’ was recorded and mixed over the course of two days at Glasgow’s Green Door Studios.  Aside from this being an incredible feat of achievement, the live sound of the band gives the whole album an energy and warmth missing from so many contemporary recordings.  The whole thing feels very real which gives authenticity to the songs themselves.  This sound is helped along by the fact that the album was completely done on analogue, with the twelve tracks done in one take each.  This is a band that knows their stuff.

For a four piece band they have an enormous sound.  The playing is excellent.  Drummer Stephen Coleman plays with power and precision, moving seamlessly through jazzed out sophistication to hammer of Thor onslaught.  Bassist Steven Litts plays his instrument with passion and energy that comes through in the loping, hypnotic bass lines.  Greg Taylor provides the guitar which cuts through the deep rhythms and gives the music a dangerous and somehow sexy feel.  Mark Swan is shit.

The songs are as schizophrenic as the way they are sung; switching from a spitting anger to heartache and sorrow (and sometimes within the same song).  There is a realism and tension to Natalie Pryce.  The songs offer up a naked and ugly truth that forces you to take note and forces a reaction.  It is the sound of someone ripping their heart out of their chest and forcing it in your face.  It is about life and death, love and sorrow, sex and dreams.  
All twelve tracks on the album have the names of people or characters (e.g. Emily, Paul, Libitina, etc.).  The album is in two parts, divided by gender: part one is the women, part two is the men.  Both parts mirror and reply to one another but are told with the emphasis changing perspective.  This and the choice of album title ‘…and other tales’ are constant reminders of the fallacy of it all.  Indeed the name Natalie Pryce seemingly appears to have no known origin.  Nothing is real here; everything is constructed.  

At first this post-modern exercise may seem a little upsetting; we are made explicitly aware that it is all constructed and then somehow through the passion and energy of the music we are sucked in to believing in an honesty of some sort.  We feel it is authentic and therefore we feel we understand it and by understanding it we feel we own it.  Anything of great value people naturally want to own and for creative works, ownership supposedly comes through understanding:  ‘I know what this means hence, in part, it belongs to me’.  But by telling you it is all fake right from the start the meaning becomes much too mysterious to grasp this easily.

But isn’t this just a turning on its head of what so many lesser bands do, where a t-shirt and jeans image of honesty is in actual fact carefully designed?  Going deeper than this what Natalie Pryce may be doing is highlighting the absurd need for authenticity in music that doesn’t exist in other art forms.  When watching a film or play we know that the characters are played by actors and the performance has been directed, yet we allow ourselves to go along with the lie and be taken in by the story.  This may be what Natalie Pryce are doing, using the mediums of characters and stories to tell of real things.  Perhaps the final clue is in the album cover itself; Oscar Wilde said ‘Give a man a mask and he will tell you the truth’.


Elizabeth

Tamara

Peyton

Bisclavaret

Paul

Joseph Lamb

You’re at the end of your tether. Your workmates think you’re a vile wee shit, your partner can’t stand to look at you and people laugh at you on the street. You come home to your drab wee council flat and spend the evening recollecting all the things that have gone wrong in your life.You think “if I die, will anyone notice I’m gone?” Then you realise- you have nothing left to live for. You find a shotgun amongst the detritus of your meagre personal belongings and you put it under your chin. You’re about to pull the trigger when you hear something. It’s a radio show. The band on are playing obscure alternative songs inspired by post-punk and avant-garde blues. You catch the name- it’s ‘Natalie Pryce’. You listen for a few minutes. You find yourself interested in the strange, narrative lyrics. You find yourself enjoying the tunes. Then you think “maybe life isn’t so bad after all. Maybe everything will be alright.”

They find your brains all over the kitchen work surface the next morning.

Edith

Natalie Pryce

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