 |
Andy Votel | |
|---|---|
| Born | Andrew Shallcross 4 November 1975 Marple Bridge, Stockport, England |
Andrew Shallcross (born 4 November 1975) [1] , known as Andy Votel, is an English musician, DJ, record producer, graphic designer and co-founder of Twisted Nerve Records and the reissue label Finders Keepers Records.
Votel began making music in the late 1980s as the youngest member of the group Violators of the English Language (from which the VOTEL stage name is derived). [2] The group appeared on the Howard Jacobson BBC documentary Think of England in 1991 performing a rap song with a young DJ Semtex as a backing dancer. [3] Violators of the English Language failed to gain label interest as a group but Fat City released the Violators of the English Language instrumental tracks as VOTEL in 1996.
In 2000 Votel signed to XL Records. He recorded two albums for the label, Styles of the Unexpected (2000) [4] and All Ten Fingers (2002). These albums featured original Can singer Malcolm Mooney, Guy Garvey, Gramme, and Jane Weaver. Votel's music is often released under a pseudonym. His aliases include Applehead, Anworth Kirk, Tandy Love, Xian Orphic, Slant Azymuth, Neotantrik, and Tony Deval.
Having built a reputation through Violators of the English Language, Votel began mixing psychedelic music with jazz and hip-hop records at clubs like The Hacienda and Home And South from the early 1990s. [5] He is an internationally renowned DJ and has performed at events such as Sonar, All Tomorrow's Parties, and the Green Man Festival. Votel founded the B-Music DJ Collective alongside ex-Hacienda DJ and journalist John Maccready. Other B-Music collaborators include David Holmes, Belle And Sebastian, Edan, Bob Stanley, and Gruff Rhys. Votel has presented shows for Radio 4 such as 2011's Free Wales Harmony, which documented the history of Welsh protest music. [6] He appears regularly alongside Stuart Maconie on The Freakier Zone show on BBC 6 Music. [7]
Votel has produced extensively for Badly Drawn Boy, including tracks on the Mercury Music Prize winning album The Hour of Bewilderbeast . He has also produced music for Gruff Rhys including the single 'Shark Ridden Waters' on the album Hotel Shampoo . Votel has also remixed or produced material for Ian Brown, The Avalanches, Lamb, Elastica, Texas, Death in Vegas, Kings of Convenience, Tim Burgess, Broadcast, and Elbow, among others. Votel also creates mix compilation CDs, including the Music To Watch Girls Cry series, [8] Vertigo Mixed, a compilation of rare tracks from the Vertigo Records catalogue, [9] Brazilika, rare Brazilian tracks [10] and Hungaraton, rare Hungarian music. [11]
In 1997 Votel met Badly Drawn Boy and the pair founded the label Twisted Nerve, initially to release music by Badly Drawn Boy and Dave Tyack. The label then expanded, releasing the earliest recordings of many other artists including Doves, Elbow, PlanningToRock, and Alfie.
In 1999 Votel, along with Doug Shipton and Dom Thomas, founded the reissue label Finders Keepers. The debut release was a reissue of the then-obscure L'enfant Assassin Des Mouches by Jean-Claude Vannier. The label then carved a niche in reissuing vinyl obscurities from around the world, tracking down artists such as Selda Bagcan, [12] Bruno Spoerri and Jean-Pierre Massiera. [13]
Votel co-runs Bird records with Jane Weaver and co-runs Pre-Cert Home Entertainment with Demdike Stare and Boomkat.
Votel is a graphic designer [8] and has created over 150 record sleeves. Notable artists to use his graphic design work include Gilles Peterson, Badly Drawn Boy, David Holmes, and Cate Le Bon. He has also designed campaigns for Adidas, Stüssy, Levi, and Adam Et Rope. He was also the in-house designer for Fat City. Votel teaches part-time at Stockport Design College.
Votel is married to musician Jane Weaver.
Votel has been the curator of a number of events including the 2006 event at the Barbican Centre celebrating the music of Jean-Claude Vannier and Serge Gainsbourg. [14] This event reunited musicians who played on the albums Histoire de Melody Nelson and L'enfant Assassin des Mouches. It also featured a number of contemporary artists as guest vocalists including Jarvis Cocker, Badly Drawn Boy, Brigitte Fontaine, The Bad Seeds' Mick Harvey and Gruff Rhys. Other notable events include Barbican shows with Magma, Jean-Pierre Massiera and Polish composer Andrzej Korzyński [15] and assisting Jarvis Cocker with the 2007 Meltdown Festival. He also curated 2013's Festival Number 6 at Portmeirion. [16]
Votel writes about outsider music for websites such as Red Bull Music Academy.
| This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(May 2020) |
Super Furry Animals are a Welsh rock band formed in Cardiff in 1993. For the duration of their professional career, the band consisted of Gruff Rhys, Huw Bunford, Guto Pryce, Cian Ciaran, and Dafydd Ieuan. An earlier incarnation of the band featured actor Rhys Ifans on lead vocals. The band are considered to be part of the renaissance of Welsh culture which emerged in the 1990s: other Welsh bands of the time include the Manic Street Preachers, Stereophonics, Catatonia and Gorky's Zygotic Mynci.
Gruffudd Maredudd Bowen Rhys is a Welsh musician, composer, producer, filmmaker and author. He performs solo and with several bands, including Super Furry Animals, which obtained mainstream success in the 1990s. He formed the electro-pop outfit Neon Neon with Boom Bip. Their album Stainless Style was nominated for the 2008 Nationwide Mercury Prize. He won the 2011 Welsh Music Prize for his album Hotel Shampoo, which was followed up by American Interior in 2014, accompanied by a film, a book and a mobile app. His most recent album, Sadness Sets Me Free, was released in 2024. He is considered a figurehead of the era known as Cool Cymru.
Damon Michael Gough, known by the stage name Badly Drawn Boy, is an English indie singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.
About a Boy is the second album by English singer-songwriter Badly Drawn Boy, released in 8 April 2002 under Twisted Nerve Records and XL Recordings, and in America under the short-lived ARTISTdirect Records, as the soundtrack to the film About a Boy. Gough was chosen to compose and perform the entire soundtrack.
Have You Fed the Fish? is an album released by Badly Drawn Boy in 2002. The album's title originates from the question which Gough asks his daughter each day "to the point where it got to sound like one of those words you say too many times and it sounds silly."
One Plus One Is One is the fourth studio album by Badly Drawn Boy, released in 2004. It is his last album for XL Recordings.
Guerrilla is the third studio album by Welsh rock band Super Furry Animals. The record was released on 14 June 1999 by Creation Records and peaked at number 10 in the UK Albums Chart. Guerrilla was conceived as a commercial 'pop' album and was produced by the band themselves, as regular producer Gorwel Owen felt exhausted after a busy schedule working for other bands. Recording took place at Real World Studios, Box, Wiltshire in mid-1998 with the group experimenting with a sampler for the first time and writing a number of songs in the studio. The band tried to create a 45-minute long, immediate sounding record, and therefore chose the upbeat songs from the 25 tracks which were recorded during sessions for the album. Guerrilla was chosen as the album's title as a pun on the group's name.
Mwng is the fourth studio album by Welsh rock band the Super Furry Animals, and the first by the group to have lyrics written entirely in the Welsh language. Mwng was released on 15 May 2000 on the band's own record label, Placid Casual, following the demise of their former label, Creation. The album includes the single "Ysbeidiau Heulog", and reached number 11 on the UK Albums Chart following its release—the first Welsh-language album to reach the top 20. This success led to Mwng being mentioned in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom by Elfyn Llwyd, who described the record as a celebration of a "new wave of confidence in the Welsh nation".
Histoire de Melody Nelson is a 1971 concept album by French singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg. Produced by Jean-Claude Desmarty, the album was released on March 24, 1971 through Philips Records. Its narrative follows an illicit romance which develops between the middle-aged narrator and fourteen-year-old girl Melody Nelson, portrayed on the album and its cover art by Gainsbourg's then-partner Jane Birkin.
How Did I Get Here? is a 1999 compilation album by Badly Drawn Boy. The album was created for American and Japanese audiences who were yet to be exposed to the artist. The album contains many tracks from his fourth and fifth Eps and the entire CD version of his third EP, EP 3.
Twisted Nerve Records was a Manchester, England-based record label, founded by Damon Gough and Andy Votel.
The discography of English alternative music singer/songwriter Badly Drawn Boy includes eight studio albums, one compilation, six extended plays and twenty-one singles. The first EP and several singles were released on Gough's own label "Twisted Nerve", which he started with like-minded Manchester musician Andy Votel. Badly Drawn Boy rose in popularity in 1997 when he joined the likes of Thom Yorke, Richard Ashcroft, and Mike D on the celebrity-filled UNKLE album Psyence Fiction. Due to the mild UK chart success of the 1999 single "Once Around the Block", XL Recordings signed up Badly Drawn Boy to release the debut album The Hour of Bewilderbeast in 2000. The album won critical praise and Britain's acclaimed Mercury Prize for Best Album. The album caught the attention of author Nick Hornby who then asked Gough to score the film being made for his book About a Boy.
Candylion is the second solo album by Welsh musician and Super Furry Animals front-man Gruff Rhys. It was released on 8 January 2007 through Rough Trade Records and Team Love and peaked at number fifty on the UK Albums Chart. The album includes the singles "Candylion" and "Gyrru Gyrru Gyrru".
Jean-Claude Vannier is a French musician, composer and arranger. Vannier has composed music, written lyrics, and produced albums for many singers.
Rick Tomlinson is an English, Bolton based musician, best known for one of his projects, Voice of the Seven Woods, with Chris Walmsley and Pete Hedley. Tomlinson is most commonly associated with the Manchester alternative music scene, and is regularly associated with the B-Music collective; a Manchester based DJ, music and arts collaboration that includes DJ Andy Votel, Super Furry Animals's frontman Gruff Rhys and various other DJs and artists.
Dave Tyack, who also recorded under the name Dakota Oak, was an English musician and a founding artist on the Twisted Nerve Records label. He recorded alongside fellow Twisted Nerve artists Badly Drawn Boy and Andy Votel on several releases and played drums with two further bands, Misty Dixon and D.O.T. Tyack was also an artist and his own drawings featured on the covers of most of his records.
Jane Louise Weaver is an English singer, songwriter, and guitarist. She runs the label Bird Records, an offshoot of Twisted Nerve Records. Weaver has performed as part of the Britpop group Kill Laura, the folktronica project Misty Dixon, and as a solo artist. She was brought up in the town of Widnes, Cheshire.
Far Out Recordings is a UK-based record label specialising in but not limited to the music of Brazil. It was founded in the mid-1990s and is run by DJ, entrepreneur and producer Joe Davis. Music released on the label extends from samba, jazz, MPB, soul and disco, to house, broken beat, electronica and remixes.
"You Were Right" is the first single released from English singer-songwriter Badly Drawn Boy's second studio album, Have You Fed the Fish? He recorded the song and album following his work on the soundtrack to the 2002 romantic comedy-drama film About a Boy. The song, written through the process of arranging random words into fluent verses, contains references to several musicians, including Madonna, Frank Sinatra, Jeff Buckley, Kurt Cobain, and John Lennon, as well as Elizabeth II.
Morus Elfryn was a Welsh musician, television production manager and carpenter. Described by Gruff Rhys as a "maverick singer", he recorded for the Welsh-language label Sain in the 1970s and later worked on S4C programmes including C'mon Midffîld!.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
