Wednesday 27th July 05 - Emma Rugg Oceans/Depart EP Launch at the Lamp By Michelle Dee Photos By Roland Standaert

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Photograph Gallery   Emma Rugg Gallery 1,    Gallery 2,

After the worldwide success of her 2003 album Isolated Impressions Emma has been back in the studio both at home in Hull and in New York and put together a particular set of tracks marking a change of direction in her music. Emma welcomes us all to the Lamp with a bright smile and breezy Hello and an acknowledgement to the artists Shep and Steve Reed who have supported her tonight. She opens her set with Grand Designs a potent song taken from her first album. With a sense of purpose, candid and creative, her beatific trademark vocal style cuts through the gentle buzz of the crowd and captures the seventy or more throng.

Sometimes solo artists are very much on their own on an empty stage but tonight I could feel the audience were with Emma; every note and refrain. A warm glow spread throughout the room, as Hull's own voice of an angel rang out and reverberated of the ruby walls.

In between airing tracks, old and new, including some from the new EP Oceans/Depart Emma talks to her audience. She mentions Leicester Square and for a brief second I think she is going to refer to the recent events in London, but what unfolds is a kooky little tale about white phone booths.

She stands tall (in heels at least) somewhere between the traditional Folk genre with more easily accessible pop melodies not quite Eliza Carthy country but somewhere near, partly due to the darker deeper phrases having something of a Gaelic flavour. Arresting her audience she shifts effortlessly from a soaring soprano to a soulful sonorous contralto; shades of Joni Mitchell perhaps.

Simple songs like Fireworks; minimalist with easy rhyming couplets, sit side by side with more complex songs like Oceans; phrases swell and fall like blue coral waves, over and over, emotional yet hugely inspiring. Especially if you think back to how Emma has financed this musical passage. She started by playing on street corners to passers by in both the bright sunshine and the bitterest of cold winds. Each day she counted up what she made, keeping a tally on her progress, until she had enough to fund a recording session at Fairview.

From this gritty determination sprang forth her debut album Isolated Impressions, which received critical, acclaim and has sold well both on a national and an international level. Emma also decided to set up her own record company Indreams Records to negate some of the pressures and pitfalls usually experienced by emerging artists.

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Check the thisisUll.com Gallery Photographs courtesy and Copyright ©  Roland Standaert 2005

Photograph Gallery   Emma Rugg Gallery 1,    Gallery 2,

Album Reviews - Emma Rugg - Oceans / Depart EP By Steve Rudd
	Since Hull singer-songwriter Emma released her fabulous debut album Isolated Impression, her song writing style has changed somewhat, with this five-track EP being the perfect showcase for two brand new songs (in Oceans and Depart), along with appearances from her older tunes When I Looked At You and Prelude To The End Read more...

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