Album Notes

Victoria Hume survived a near miss from an air-rifle bullet at the age of one – smashing accidentally through her parents’ bedroom window in Brighton. It was a rogue event in childhood more often characterised by the peaceful landscape of the Dorset coastline and eccentric crumbling English private schools; but perhaps it mirrors the mixture of prettily melancholic calm and forceful emotion that characterises her music.

She is now the successful curator of a hospital arts programme based in London but finds that songwriting is a necessary addiction – the only way to deal with ghosts, and the strange undermining, life-giving force of emotion.

In her curatorial life she has heard the dreams people experience whilst in post-operative intensive care – all of which seem to confirm that we use symbols, involuntarily, to comprehend disturbing new experiences. So for her all songs are distortions, or constructions, of chaotic feeling – a line of tiny mirrors held up to space.

As a teenager she wrote poetry – learning about Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath in a Victorian mansion deep in smuggler country. Frequently shrouded in deep mists, it was full of ghosts who befriended the Latin teacher, and boasted an inspirationally radical English teacher who cultivated her love of language and helped her to Oxford to study literature. But while she learned the piano, messing around with would-be-Delius doodles, she was too lazy for the theory of Schubert’s Winterreise and soundly failed her music A Level, abandoning music completely for years before reviving her interest in singing on moving to London ten years ago – where she has since consistently performed and written her own material, and worked on collaborative projects with other artists and musicians.

Limbs & Digits is her first solo album – jazzy, folky, emotional, a little strange, and full of songs that are catchy and adventurous.

She is performing at Toronto’s NXNE (Free Times Café, Fri 19 June, 10pm and Six Shooter Back Lot BBQ, Sat 20 June) before a UK tour this autumn and winter.

www.victoriahume.com
www.myspace.com/victoriahume
www.sonicbids.com/victoriahume2

For further information contact
info@thumbarts.com