Corselette

Classy, lyrical electronic pop from former Long Blondes frontwoman Kate Jackson. Corselette is the new electronic pop project from former Long Blondes frontwoman Kate Jackson. Produced by Sheffield synth pioneer, Heaven 17 and Human League legend Martyn Ware, Corselette’s debut album ‘Death of a Cul-de-sac Dream’ combines lyrical sass and sharp hooks, analogue synths and digital precision, to make visible the desires, anxieties and questions of identity faced by many in mid life. Ware’s illustrious production career includes work with the great Tina Turner, Sananda Maitreya (formally known as Terence Trent D’Arby) and Erasure. He has now cast his magic on Corselette’s debut. Formally the singer and lyricist of Sheffield art rock five piece The Long Blondes, Kate Jackson wrote this record alone, on a laptop, headphones on, grabbing the only time she had in the early hours of the morning, with her young son and husband asleep beside her. Envisaged as a follow up to her 00’s Long Blondes persona and as an attempt to make some sense of her own life, the idea of Corselette emerged. The woman who once sang “you don’t need a boyfriend”, now a 40 something married mother struggling to balance her own desires, guilt and fears, overcome self doubt and reclaim her power. Jackson is also a celebrated visual artist working mainly in painting. Her music and painting are not separate worlds, many of the same ideas and themes run throughout her work, from The Long Blondes through to ‘British Road Movies’, the solo album she made with Bernard Butler, to her many urban landscape paintings and into Corselette. She takes the overlooked visual culture of modern Britain – concrete, roads, flyovers, service stations and urban architecture – and gives it the glamour, colour and emotional charge that pop music traditionally gives to everyday experience. With Corselette she is exploring the everyday interior domestic experience – watching TV in bed, looking at yourself in the mirror in the morning, daily routines with a partner – life behind the cul-de-sac curtains. ‘Death of a Cul-de-sac Dream’ combines art and pop music to create a concept album about the interior landscape of mid life. Today Martyn Ware also combines pop music and sound art with his Illustrious Company, working with architectural spaces to make 3D soundscapes. Both Jackson and Ware combined create an album that sits in the sonic lineage of Sheffield synth pop and alternative music, as well as the art and pop worlds that both inhabit.