Azalia Snail
Encyclopedia
Azalia Snail is an American
avant-garde
singer-songwriter
and musician. She is a multi-instrumentalist
active in psych folk
and indie rock
, and played a prominent role in the 1990s lo-fi music
scene She was later dubbed the "Queen of lo-fi".
Snail made eleven solo albums between 1990 and 2006 and won the Los Angeles LA Weekly
Music Award for Best New-Genre/Uncategorizable Artist in 2000. She has also written film score
s for several indie features and short films.
to hippie
parents, and was named after the azalea
s that grew near their home. At the age of about six her mother persuaded her to take piano lessons, and while Snail coped, she was "frustrated by the whole disciplinary process". This prompted her to switch to guitar, which gave rise to more lessons, and more musical discipline. When she was 15 Snail bought an electric guitar, against her parent's wishes who wanted her to play acoustic instruments
. She was forced to return the guitar and she told her mother "That's all I want in my life – this guitar."
After high school, Snail left home and moved to New York City where she worked as a writer. In 1987 she started jamming
with other musicians in bars, and then branched off on her own to record her own music. In the late 1980s she sent some of her material to a radio show called "Lo-Fi" on WFMU
in New Jersey
. The DJ
there played her songs regularly, and soon she became known as the "Queen of lo-fi". Snail later distanced from the lo-fi
label, saying that her music is now professionally recorded. But the exposure she gained on the radio show prompted her to start performing on her own. In the 1990s she toured North America and Europe with several bands, including Low
, Trumans Water
and The Grifters.
Snail's music shunned conventional melody and often included elements of noise. Her unconventional approach to music was influenced, in part, by her experiences from experimenting with hallucinogenics
. In the early 1990s she occasionally used LSD and magic mushrooms to enhance her perceptions. Though she has never used hallucinogenics since, she said: "I'm a big believer in Timothy Leary
and Aldous Huxley
and a lot of important philosophers who have all taken drugs to expand their horizons. I don't think you have to keep doing it throughout your whole life, and I don't believe everybody needs that, but it definitely turns you on to a whole new world and possibilities. I was interested in experiencing some of the things my favorite writers, artists and musicians have. I wanted to feel how they felt."
In the 1990s Snail made eight solo albums, writing all the songs herself. The albums generally featured a few guest musicians, but Snail played most of the instruments herself, including guitars, zither
s, keyboards, theremin
and percussion. She also engineered and produced many of the albums herself. Piero Scaruffi
in his History of Rock Music described her first album, Snailbait (1990) as a mixture of "Gong
's cosmic psychedelia and Brian Eno
's noise-pop", and her third album, Fumarole Rising (1993) as "the culmination of her program of disintegration of the pop song". In 1994 Snail collaborated with Susanne Lewis
of the indie
/punk
band Hail
to record How to Live with a Tiger (credited as "Hail/Snail").
Snail moved to Los Angeles
in December 1999 to work in film. There she collaborated with filmmaker Sadie Benning
on a video shown on MTV
. She has also written film score
s for several indie features and short films, including the soundtrack to MTV's Ain't Nuthin' But a She Thing. In 2000 Snail and Brad Laner/Electric Company shared the Los Angeles LA Weekly
Music Award for Best New-Genre/Uncategorizable Artist.
Snail has since made another two solo albums, Brazen Arrows (2001) and Avec Amour (2006). The New Zealand
-based Powertool record label released Petal Metal in 2008, a two-CD retrospective of Snail's work. She also toured New Zealand in January 2010. I. Khider in Perfect Sound Forever
described Snail as an "adept indie rocker" with a "quirky, creative edge". Scaruffi wrote that she "outdoes the classics, and becomes a classic herself".
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
avant-garde
Avant-garde music
Avant-garde music is a term used to characterize music which is thought to be ahead of its time, i.e. containing innovative elements or fusing different genres....
singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...
and musician. She is a multi-instrumentalist
Multi-instrumentalist
A multi-instrumentalist is a musician who plays a number of different instruments.The Bachelor of Music degree usually requires a second instrument to be learned , but people who double on another instrument are not usually seen as multi-instrumentalists.-Classical music:Music written for Symphony...
active in psych folk
Psych folk
Psychedelic folk or psych folk is a loosely defined form of psychedelic music that originated in the 1960s through the fusion of folk music and psychedelic rock...
and indie rock
Indie rock
Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise rock, space rock, sadcore, riot grrrl and emo, among others...
, and played a prominent role in the 1990s lo-fi music
Lo-fi music
Lo-fi is lower quality of sound recordings than the usual standard for music. The qualities of lo-fi are usually achieved by either degrading the quality of the recorded audio, or using certain equipment. Recent uses of the phrase have led to it becoming a genre, although it still remains as an...
scene She was later dubbed the "Queen of lo-fi".
Snail made eleven solo albums between 1990 and 2006 and won the Los Angeles LA Weekly
LA Weekly
LA Weekly is a free weekly tabloid-sized "alternative weekly" in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Editor/Publisher Jay Levin and a board of directors that included actor-producer Michael Douglas...
Music Award for Best New-Genre/Uncategorizable Artist in 2000. She has also written film score
Film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
s for several indie features and short films.
Biography
Azalia Snail (her real name) was born in MarylandMaryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
to hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
parents, and was named after the azalea
Azalea
Azaleas are flowering shrubs comprising two of the eight subgenera of the genus Rhododendron, Pentanthera and Tsutsuji . Azaleas bloom in spring, their flowers often lasting several weeks...
s that grew near their home. At the age of about six her mother persuaded her to take piano lessons, and while Snail coped, she was "frustrated by the whole disciplinary process". This prompted her to switch to guitar, which gave rise to more lessons, and more musical discipline. When she was 15 Snail bought an electric guitar, against her parent's wishes who wanted her to play acoustic instruments
Acoustic music
Acoustic music comprises music that solely or primarily uses instruments which produce sound through entirely acoustic means, as opposed to electric or electronic means...
. She was forced to return the guitar and she told her mother "That's all I want in my life – this guitar."
After high school, Snail left home and moved to New York City where she worked as a writer. In 1987 she started jamming
Jam session
Jam sessions are often used by musicians to develop new material, find suitable arrangements, or simply as a social gathering and communal practice session. Jam sessions may be based upon existing songs or forms, may be loosely based on an agreed chord progression or chart suggested by one...
with other musicians in bars, and then branched off on her own to record her own music. In the late 1980s she sent some of her material to a radio show called "Lo-Fi" on WFMU
WFMU
WFMU is a listener-supported, independent community radio station headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey, United States, broadcasting at 91.1 MHz FM, presenting a freeform radio format...
in New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
. The DJ
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...
there played her songs regularly, and soon she became known as the "Queen of lo-fi". Snail later distanced from the lo-fi
Lo-fi music
Lo-fi is lower quality of sound recordings than the usual standard for music. The qualities of lo-fi are usually achieved by either degrading the quality of the recorded audio, or using certain equipment. Recent uses of the phrase have led to it becoming a genre, although it still remains as an...
label, saying that her music is now professionally recorded. But the exposure she gained on the radio show prompted her to start performing on her own. In the 1990s she toured North America and Europe with several bands, including Low
Low (band)
Low is an American indie rock group from Duluth, Minnesota, formed in 1993. As of 2010, the group is composed of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker , both founding members, and Steve Garrington ....
, Trumans Water
Trumans Water
Trumans Water is an indie rock band from San Diego, California formed in 1991. They have released over a dozen full length recordings over their career, wherein they collaborated with acts in genre, including Azalia Snail, Chan Marshall and Thurston Moore....
and The Grifters.
Snail's music shunned conventional melody and often included elements of noise. Her unconventional approach to music was influenced, in part, by her experiences from experimenting with hallucinogenics
Psychedelics, dissociatives and deliriants
This general group of pharmacological agents can be divided into three broad categories: psychedelics, dissociatives, and deliriants. These classes of psychoactive drugs have in common that they can cause subjective changes in perception, thought, emotion and consciousness...
. In the early 1990s she occasionally used LSD and magic mushrooms to enhance her perceptions. Though she has never used hallucinogenics since, she said: "I'm a big believer in Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...
and Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
and a lot of important philosophers who have all taken drugs to expand their horizons. I don't think you have to keep doing it throughout your whole life, and I don't believe everybody needs that, but it definitely turns you on to a whole new world and possibilities. I was interested in experiencing some of the things my favorite writers, artists and musicians have. I wanted to feel how they felt."
In the 1990s Snail made eight solo albums, writing all the songs herself. The albums generally featured a few guest musicians, but Snail played most of the instruments herself, including guitars, zither
Zither
The zither is a musical string instrument, most commonly found in Slovenia, Austria, Hungary citera, northwestern Croatia, the southern regions of Germany, alpine Europe and East Asian cultures, including China...
s, keyboards, theremin
Theremin
The theremin , originally known as the aetherphone/etherophone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox is an early electronic musical instrument controlled without discernible physical contact from the player. It is named after its Russian inventor, Professor Léon Theremin, who patented the device...
and percussion. She also engineered and produced many of the albums herself. Piero Scaruffi
Piero Scaruffi
Piero Scaruffi received a degree in Mathematics in 1982 from University of Turin, where he did work on the General Theory of Relativity. For a number of years he was the head of the Artificial Intelligence Center at Olivetti, based in Cupertino, California. He has been a visiting scholar at...
in his History of Rock Music described her first album, Snailbait (1990) as a mixture of "Gong
Gong (band)
Gong is a Franco-British progressive/psychedelic rock band formed by Australian musician Daevid Allen. Their music has also been described as space rock. Other notable band members include Allan Holdsworth, Tim Blake, Didier Malherbe, Pip Pyle, Gilli Smyth, Steve Hillage, Francis Moze, Mike Howlett...
's cosmic psychedelia and Brian Eno
Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
's noise-pop", and her third album, Fumarole Rising (1993) as "the culmination of her program of disintegration of the pop song". In 1994 Snail collaborated with Susanne Lewis
Susanne Lewis
Susanne Lewis is an American musician, songwriter and artist. She is a solo-artist and a founder or collaborator of a number of bands and music projects. She has a band with Bob Drake called Hail, who have released five albums , a solo-project called Kissyfur, and she also releases music under her...
of the indie
Indie (music)
In music, independent music, often shortened to indie music or "indie" is a term used to describe independence from major commercial record labels or their subsidiaries, and an autonomous, Do-It-Yourself approach to recording and publishing....
/punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
band Hail
Hail (band)
Hail are an American indie/punk band with an avant-garde twist consisting of Susanne Lewis and Bob Drake . The band has also had guest appearances from Mike Johnson, Dave Kerman, Chris Cutler and Bill Gilonis. Albums include Gypsy Cat & Gypsy Bird , Turn of the Screw and Kirk...
to record How to Live with a Tiger (credited as "Hail/Snail").
Snail moved to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
in December 1999 to work in film. There she collaborated with filmmaker Sadie Benning
Sadie Benning
Sadie Benning is a video maker, visual artist, and musician.She first made her name in the early 1990s as a teenage video maker from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Raised by her mother in inner-city Milwaukee, Benning left school at age 16, primarily due to the homophobia she experienced...
on a video shown on MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
. She has also written film score
Film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
s for several indie features and short films, including the soundtrack to MTV's Ain't Nuthin' But a She Thing. In 2000 Snail and Brad Laner/Electric Company shared the Los Angeles LA Weekly
LA Weekly
LA Weekly is a free weekly tabloid-sized "alternative weekly" in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Editor/Publisher Jay Levin and a board of directors that included actor-producer Michael Douglas...
Music Award for Best New-Genre/Uncategorizable Artist.
Snail has since made another two solo albums, Brazen Arrows (2001) and Avec Amour (2006). The New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
-based Powertool record label released Petal Metal in 2008, a two-CD retrospective of Snail's work. She also toured New Zealand in January 2010. I. Khider in Perfect Sound Forever
Perfect Sound Forever (magazine)
Perfect Sound Forever is one of the longest-running online-only music magazines . Along with Michael Goldberg's Addicted to Noise Perfect Sound Forever (est. 1995) is one of the longest-running online-only music magazines . Along with Michael Goldberg's Addicted to Noise Perfect Sound Forever...
described Snail as an "adept indie rocker" with a "quirky, creative edge". Scaruffi wrote that she "outdoes the classics, and becomes a classic herself".
Discography
- Snailbait (1990, Albertine)
- The Teenage Bedroom Tapes 1987–1991 (1992, Union Pole) – compilation album of unreleased recordings
- Burnt Sienna (1992, Funky Mushroom)
- Fumarole Rising (1993, Funky Mushroom)
- How to Live with a Tiger (as "Hail/Snail") (1994, Funky Mushroom) – duo with Susanne LewisSusanne LewisSusanne Lewis is an American musician, songwriter and artist. She is a solo-artist and a founder or collaborator of a number of bands and music projects. She has a band with Bob Drake called Hail, who have released five albums , a solo-project called Kissyfur, and she also releases music under her...
- Escape Maker (1995, Garden of Delights)
- Blue Danube (1995, Normal)
- Deep Motif (1996, Candy Floss)
- Breaker Mortar (1997, Dark Beloved Cloud)
- Soft Bloom (1999, Dark Beloved Cloud)
- Brazen Arrows (2001, Dark Beloved Cloud)
- Avec Amour (2006, True Classical)
- Petal Metal (2008, Powertool) – retrospective compilation album
- Celestial Respect (2011, Silber Records)