Princess Chelsea
About Princess Chelsea from Auckland
Princess Chelsea is a female composer and bedroom recording artist.
Inspired by female artists like Bachelorette and Kate Bush, who take a hands on and total-control approach to crafting all elements of their recorded output, she has spent the better part of her twenties learning how to produce and record - an exercise which most certainly has influenced the development of her music.
Princess Chelsea studied classical piano throughout her childhood and teenage years as well as dabbling in drums, guitar and clarinet. While at high school she discovered her love of composition - writing and recording “Monkey Eats Bananas” in a sixth form music class - a song which eight years later would go on to be featured in a major television campaign for Auckland city.
In 2004 while working the counter at Marbecks Classical she teamed up with her west Auckland buddies to form ‘circus punk’ act Teen Wolf, a three piece that combined Princess Chelsea’s classically driven keyboard lines with the raw energy of garage punk. Teen Wolf was a band famed for their charismatic and energetic live performances coupled with a somewhat confusing chemistry between its members. A typical live performance would inevitably involve blood curdling screams, beer spillage, heavily distorted bass guitar, swearing, tribal drumming, and a lot of arpeggios.
Princess Chelsea has also toured internationally as a member of The Brunettes - playing keyboards, bass, saxophone, glockenspiel and percussion.
In 2009, less than 24 hours after her cover of White Town’s ‘Your Woman’ was uploaded to a local music blog (Einstein Music Journal) she was featured on the Rolling Stone home page, who called her work “absolutely sublime” and the song quickly shot to the top of influential website HypeMachine’s charts (#3) - superseding (even if only for one day) the likes of Britney Spears.
Since then Princess Chelsea has drip-fed a small amount of recorded material onto the World Wide Web - gaining a small but devoted international following along the way. Music lovers from New Zealand to Mexico, (Chris Frantz (Talking Heads / Tom Tom Club) has name-dropped her album as the #1 release to look out for in 2011) have been anxiously awaiting her debut “Lil’ Golden Book’, which Lil’ Chief Records release May 2nd, 2011
add your gig
add to favourites
