The Sheffield Star  9th July 2008 Full article in context here.

Push comes to shove for the Voodoo child

80s influence: Izzie Voodoo

SEVERAL things drive the latest lady pledging to cause a major blip on our musical radar. One of them involves walloping people. The other is a personal war on rubbish gigs.But don't worry, she's not about to belt you if you don't like what you see/hear. "Standard gigs are very, very dull," says the Barnsley-born, Sheffield-based performer."I grew up with a dancing school doing stage work and productions with lights and make up, costumes and mad theatrical people, so four boring looking blokes wearing boring Tshirts and boring jeans just doesn't yank my chain. "I know you're there for the music but you'd just as well go for a run and listen to it on your iPod."

And one listen to Izzie's album The Push confirms why she's driven to be different, including dishing out candy to fans.

"They get to see PVC hot pants and kinky boots, but I'm considering getting dancers and we're working on visual imagery. The lollipops are for people who come to see us. If I like them I throw them a lolly."

So, what can your ears expect? Well, Izzie's sound has modern fire but with clear footings in 80s electro laced with punk energy and pop seasoning.

"My influences do stem in some ways from 80s music," she concurs, uttering Human League, The Cure, Sisters Of Mercy and Hazel O'Connor, as well as Adam & The Ants, Madonna, Duran Duran.

"I listened to them as a teen because I preferred it to the stuff I should have grown up with. There's also a fair bit of punk in there too and I've always loved dance music as well. "I tried very hard when I first started writing to distance myself from 'known' music in an attempt to sound original, but now I'm listening to Klaxons, Bloc Party, Hadouken among others and lots of 'unheard' bands I play on my podshow (see www.voodooquotashow.co.uk).

As for her name, it doesn't give much of a clue as to her sound.

"Izzie is real, but the Voodoo bit came from a comment someone made very early on when I ran a song past him," she explains. "He said he felt like I'd done some kind of voodoo on him, so the name stuck."

Off stage she's more likely to be dabbling in martial arts than the dark arts. It is something that impacts on performance.

"It's brilliant for building confidence and kick boxing gets you phenomenally fit, which of course is exactly what you want on stage. I'm the sort of person whose glass is generally half full, but on the odd day it starts to dwindle just an hour's training helps bring it right back up."

There are times on Izzie's album – Sound is released as lead single this week – you sense she's honed something to work out to. Or to lose yourself in.

"Everyone needs to escape once in a while - most go on holiday. Listening to and writing music lets you go to all kinds of places without flight delays or having to get your bum out of the seat."

Having gone through a trial and error phase of standard band set-ups, Izzie now uses digital methodology with live guitars and bass, utilising effects along the way.

The full article contains 570 words and appears in Sheffield Star newspaper.

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The result is slinky, willful and could appeal to nu-ravers as much as strong women.'So far, it's pretty wide,' says Izzie of her demographic. 'I'd like to think there's something everyone can find in it and take out of it.

'For example, I assumed Play Bomb would be only attractive to a younger audience but, besides seven year olds singing it, I'm getting adults telling me they love it. Of course, some tracks aren't what you'd want your seven year old singing, like The White Line - that's given the album the 'explicit' sticker.

'The Push (out July 21) was written in the kind of way you’d write a life story, so it has up, downs, over-the-topness, childish bits, sexy bits, but generally I had lots of fun writing it - I hope that comes over more than anything.“

You can catch Izzie in action at Sheffield’s Washtock festival - this year happening at the Pomona and Cremorne - on July 19 at the Ecclesall Road venue.

The four-day charity event begins Thursday with Butter Brain, Oh My Word, Dead Freddy & The Cereal Killers, Pretty Ripped and Dyonisis on London Road - see www.myspace.com/washtock for more.

David

9th July 2008

Izzie Voodoo is obviously something of a DIY music machine; multi-talented, multi-instrumentalist, multi-this, multi-that!! Yes, Izzie Voodoo does it all herself and she does a bloody good job;  'The Push', turn it up loud folks, is an exhilarating and electrifying outing from this visionary digital experimentalist. 

'The Push' is Izzie Voodoo's debut album and she certainly goes all out, no holds barred etc. 'The Push' is dark electronica - pulsatingly and hypnotically rhythmic, heavy and earthy, scintillatingly organic yet totally digital - it works and certainly has teeth. This bugger bites deep and bites hard - and once bitten, you're hooked and under Voodoo's spell. Voodoo's individualistically breathy and sexy vocal style and polished delivery are absolutely suited to her slickly delivered rock electronica; something approaching Kate Bush meets Hawkwind is the end result and what a result!! Now, this may not be for everyone but, I bet many will be surprised with how much they are drawn in to its dark-side - it's quite contagious in a spell-like kinda way. Izzie Voodoo definitely knows how to hold your attention and even after nearly fifty minutes I still felt the need to press 'PLAY' again - intoxicating and morish, 'The Push' had me hooked after just one blast through!

'The Push' is clever for not trying to be too clever - if you get my meaning!! Voodoo takes her music to places that are not too self-indulgent - she could so easily have made 'The Push' too Voodoo-ish and it wouldn't have worked but, she's managed to get a really nice blend of normality in with the abnormal! Voodoo keeps it all accessible and believable to even the most anti-electro heads out there. And, Voodoo has even managed to keep her electronic dirges just on the right side of commercially acceptable; they have an inherent pop sensibility about them and several would work well if released as singles. Yes, Izzie Voodoo is one shrewd operator!!

'The Push' by Izzie Voodoo could so easily have failed, totally and utterly. But, Izzie Voodoo's canny way has come up trumps; 'The Push' works on so many levels and is a really enjoyable modernistic work of a very high standard. 'The Push' certainly kept me entertained and smiling from start to finish - I think Izzie Voodoo has got it absolutely spot-on and 'The Push' is sufficiently open to all-comers to make it a potential gold mine. Izzie Voodoo is clearly a gifted musician and her experimental bent totally suits this electronically biased genre - and, electronic music aint gonna go away any time soon so I can see nothing but success for Izzie Voodoo and her darkly earthy digital musical world. 'The Push' by Izzie Voodoo is a crackin' album of the times.

Peter J Brown aka toxic pete (www.toxicpete.co.uk)

izzie Voodoo is a one woman dynamo from Barnsley who creates a dirty, dark electronica sound on her debut album 'The Push'. The first adjective that comes to mind when hearing this album is 'home-made'. That will probably sound like a criticism, but in this age of DIY music being spread to the masses through the internet, 'home-made' no longer means 'bad'. The home made feel comes from the approach of using simple, repetitive beats on the majority of the tracks and then layering the vocals and bass over the top.

This is not complicated music, but the best music shouldn't have to be complicated to be interesting. The best and most memorable music often is very simple and this is memorable music. It's also nicely varied. If this was one of those albums where all the tracks sounded the same it would be a dire listening experience, but the variety works very well.

From the publicity photos available izzie seems to be trying for the electronica/goth/industrial rossover market and the track where this flavour comes most to the fore, 'Chaos', is ironically the weakest on the album. The musicianship is excellent and the vocal delivery exhilarating, but the lyrics have an ill judged sci-fi overtone that just seems to be trying too hard. I love sci-fi and I love Industrial Electronica, but these are two things that should not be mixed. However the other styles are approached very well. 'Least Resistance' is pure Trip-Hop and if I'd been told it was by Massive Attack or Portishead I would not have been at all surprised, 'Neat 17' is classic down-tempo electronica that is eerily effective and 'Xylene' comes across as an electronica remix of The White Stripes.

The true stand-out tracks on the album however are 'Sound', 'Play Bomb' and 'The White Line'. 'Sound' was a finalist in a VH1 sponsored song writing contest last year and it fully deserved to be. It's a pulsing, exciting electro thrill ride of a track. 'Play Bomb' is a self-confessed poppy and tongue-in-cheek track that has a truly hypnotic beat layered with fun lyrics that you will be singing to yourself for days and 'The White Line' has a dark, disturbing sound and a virtually spoken-word lyric dealing with cocaine. It's an unexpected pleasure to have at the end of the album and feels like a cross between Grandmaster Flash's 'White Lines' and PF Project's 'Choose Life'. For these three tracks alone the album is worth spending the very reasonable price of £6.95.

I'm torn about the future of izzie Voodoo. If she got snapped up by a major label, which her excellent music deserves, she would undoubtedly be encouraged to make the music more complex and deeper. Part of me would like to hear that, but another part of me knows that this simplistic, exciting approach skips straight past your critical faculties and buries itself in the pleasure centres of the brain. Whatever the future, for right now this is a great album that everyone with an interest in dark electronica should own.

'The Push' is currently available on iTunes, 'Sound' is being released as a physical single on 7th July and the physical release of 'The Push' is July 21st.

By Colin Gazeley – Ourobouros Podcast     

'She could be the twisted cousin of Goldfrapp with tracks that veer in between dark electronica torch songs a la Massive Attack with some industrial stuff thrown in and catchy pop affairs with so many twists turns as you might expect from Sparks. Exuding all the confidence and and clinical prowess of a martial arts fighter on every off the wall, menacing, exhilarating, infectious track. You'll know exactly when to let go and let yourself get carried away in the vortex of big beats, bigger choruses and layers of sultry, breathy vocals.'

Paul Le Hat  www.badrobot.co.uk

Hmm, experimental dark electronica? Smells like a goth on acid to me. And, as usual, I'm convinced that I'm right. It's certainly an interesting experience, which is more than you can say for most of the pap that gets foisted upon you, the record buying public. I'm always amazed how something even a little bit out of the ordinary can capture your imagination and lift your spirits in a world of soundalike mediocrity.

Ms Voodoo (probably not her real name) takes care of pretty much everything on this release, writing the tunes, singing and doing all sorts of clever computery bits and bobs. I've always liked the idea of computer generated music that actually sounds like it was created on a computer. I mean what's the point of simulating real music on a machine? It's the aural equivalent of a blow up doll. And this is not a record that has any truck with simulation.

I probably won't be the first person to join the dots together and come up with the comparison, of Siouxsie Sioux joining the mighty Hawkwind in 1978 to make a Donna Summer tribute album. With added musical spikes. It sounds like an utterly mad thing to do, but that's what lifts this up beyond the usual recorded-in-a-bedroom, electro goth nonsense that wearers of black nail varnish try to foist upon an uninterested world.

 The one thing that Ms Voodoo has remembered to do, which many forget, is to actually write some melodies that hang around your head, long after the sturm-und-drang has passed. "Hot Wire" could easily make the move into the world of commercial success with a few tweaks here and there, and it's not alone. "Sound" is the track getting the single push, and there's absolutely no reason, with a bit of luck, and a YouTube video, it shouldn't make some fair sized waves. Elsewhere, hooks there are a-plenty, alongside a few heavy rhythms. Nothing to get fellow Barnsley natives Saxon worried, but heavy enough.

It's on the cusp of electro goth and dark trance, with nods to the founding fathers Depeche Mode as well as the likes of Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly. But with melodies light enough to keep the Kylie fans happy and enough drama for a platoon of Collide fans, Izzie Voodoo may have stumbled across one of the big sounds of the year.

http://www.the-rocker.co.uk

....Izzie Voodoo also proves that we at Ravenheart Music are not stuck in a metal rut. Some good catchy stuff on offer here, that although not metal, it is enjoyable stuff nonetheless. Well worth checking out for fans of the genre, or for anyone that is open minded with regards their music. As for fave tracks..I quite like 'The White Line' myself. Brings out the clubber in me! This album gets released on July 21st and Izzie also plays at this years Pink Festival in Cambridge on 30th Aug. This record is cool stuff, so get it! 7.5/10 (Reviewed by Dave)

www.ravenheartmusic.euro-site.co.uk