Florence + the Machine

and what ones suite you

Issue No. 247

2012 Summer Festival Guide

Florence + the Machine

Florence and the machine is an English indie-pop band with Florence Welch as the lead singer that had a raise to fame in 2009 after the release of their first album ‘Lungs’ which got high reviews from many different people. It went straight to number two in the UK album charts and after six months there finally moved to the top spot, and in October 2010 the album had been in the charts for sixty 1

-five consecutive weeks becoming one of the bestselling albums of 2009-2010.

Florence, born on August 28,1986, grew up in London where she went to school and was toilets at a club and sang Etta James' 1962 song "Something's Got a Hold on Me".

Mairead Nash is said to be one of the most influential promoters on the London music scene and has her label named luv luv luv, she originally discovered Florence and the machine.

The huge record label Island Records, which was first founded in Florence perform1959, by Chris ing, (bottom left) Blackwell and Florence on the red carpet G r a e m e Goodall in Jamaica, now s i g n s Florence. The company has been based in the UK for many years and has a long list of successful artists signed to it such as Nicki Minaj, Jessie J and Tom

The BEAT Magazine

Jones. Florence also has released her second album Ceremonials, which went to number one in the album charts.

Florence is said to write her best songs when she’s diagnosed with dyslexia but still managed to do well academically, she also got occasionally in trouble for impromptu singing.

In 2007, Welch did her first officially recording with a band named Ashok, who released an album called Plans on the Filthy Lucre/ A b o u t Records label. This album also had the earliest version of her later hit "Kiss with a F i s t " , which at this point was titled "Happy Slap". She signed a contract for Ashok with a manager, but feeling that she

was "in the wrong band" she quit, which cancelled the contract. Florence and the Machine is managed by Mairead Nash (one half of the DJ duo Queens of Noize), who decided to manage the singer when an inebriated Welch followed Nash into the drunk or has a hangover, because that’s when the freedom, the feral music comes, creating itself wildly from the fragments gathered in her notebooks and in her head. “You’re lucid,” she explains, but you’re not really there. You’re floating through your own thoughts, and you can pick out what you need. I like those weird connections in the universe. I feel that life’s like a consistent acid trip, those times when things keep coming back.”

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