Andrea Faithful - all hail the new electro queen

A lot of people are claiming an electro title for themselves, but disco style, a dance hit and a few paparazzi shots do not an electro queen make. Andrea Faithful fully deserves her electro accolade. She scary electric. At last. Thank god.

Links for DIOYY - Does it offend you, yeah

Myspace: www.myspace.com/andreafaithful

There are so few true electro queens out there - queen bee DJs Miss Kittin and the sublime Peaches, french reine electronique Yelle, the completely insufficiently recognised southern belle Crazygirl... And, of course, UK's firstest and bestest denim duo, Robots in Disguise.

Even if you file her under electro-fusion pop, Andrea Faithful is pop transcendent, with exciting, jarring songs that make you catch your breath and hit the dancefloor.

Andrea Faithful's promo video for Rock the Flex

Andrea Faithful's mySpace list of influences includes: the Beatles, Johnny Cash, White Stripes, David Bowie, Eminem, Prodigy, Chingy, Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Blondie, Gwen Stefani, Madonna, Missy Elliot, The Cure, Bonnie Tyler, Flock of Seagulls, Adam Ant, Gary Numan, Talking Heads, Annie Lennox. That's what we like! That's what we wanna see! Except for power balladeer Bonnie Tyler... Then again, we get what Andrea's saying there and it was brave of her to put her balls to the wall and say 'yeah, I do, actually, so fuck you all. I like power-rock belter Bonnie Tyler.'

A previous stylist for Vogue magazine, a raunchy dancer for Britney Spears and Pink, Andrea may be about to hit the world hard (her fans include former Ziggy Stardust and the Red Hot Chili Peppers) but she grew up in Hull, oop North. Though she missed it by a good decade, Andrea grew up obsessed with the 1980s, an era of musical flamboyance in which image was key.

"I can't think of anything more boring," she says, "than going out on stage dressed in just jeans and T-shirt. I mean, what's the point? May as well stay at home. You want your audience to really notice you. You want them to look at you and to remember you forever." [Note from the Mooky Eds: Music must come before style for musicians! But Andrea Faithful is allowed to say stuff like this because her music is exciting and has a hint of genuine danger and - if you like electro, which we do - is really rather good. ]

Andrea Faithful's idols were people like Boy George and Adam Ant, for their music, their fashion sense, their androgyny and the excitement they generated. These were people born to be pop stars, and she loved them dearly for it. She was also drawn to the idea of how they walked on the wild side. Before long, Andrea was walking on the wild side too.

"Looking back, I think it's fair to say I saw a lot of things 14-year-olds don't necessarily need to see," she muses, "but there really was no stopping me. I wanted adventure and experience. I got it."

By 2007, Andrea had given up being a stylist / dancer / singer in several bands and was officially a solo act. "By this time, I'd hooked up with Magna Kartah," she says of the internationally recognized writer/producer who has sold over two million records worldwide. Together they proved a creative whirlwind, writing songs that mixed cutting-edge electro-pop with pure, and sometimes aggressive, dance and Hip hop beats with raise-the-roof energy levels.

In the crowd at her SXSW performance was a certain Anthony Keidis, singer with Red Hot Chili Peppers, who was so impressed he proclaimed her a future superstar. Within a year, Andrea had generated interest from right across the recording industry, but she and Kartah decided to go it alone ("Creative control, yeah?" she grins) and formed the Chubby Kid label.

Andrea Faithful and Magna Kartah recently wrote and produced a most wonderful album called Tomfoolery, and are now ready to unleash it on the world.

Imagine a Lady GaGa without the airbrushed mannerisms, or Madonna if Madonna had met Mirwais 20 years before she finally did. Tomfoolery is smart, sassy and remarkably upfront, cool and cultured. The tunes are mesmerising, instantly memorable.

Some of the Tomfoolery tracks, particularly Rock The Flex, Booby Trap and Don't You Wanna Dance, are so sonically arresting they maul your ears. The video for Rock The Flex was inspired by one of Andrea's heroes (David Bowie) and his promo for Life On Mars.

150,000 downloads on her MySpace page later, it came to the attentions of Bowie's manager, who promptly passed it on to the man himself. With Rock the Flex, imagine the nerve of Princess Superstar, and the rock-solid musical otherness of What You Waiting For by Gwen Stefani. How could David Bowie have done anything other than loved it?

If you like electro, add Andrea Faithful to your list. Electro is meant to have a bit of lightning bolt action to it, and Tomfoolery? It's a wake-up call.

Andrea Faithful news

Andrea Faithful - the most exciting new popstar of the year - releases her amazing debut single Rock The Flex on June 8th out on Chubby Kid Records - the lead-off single from her upcoming debut album Tomfoolery (out August) - produced by Magna Kartah.

Rock The Flex is a feral slice of avant-garde electro-pop, a future club classic that should have little problem in crossing over, dominating the charts and putting her name where it so clearly belongs: up in lights.