January 14th 2011

Intimate Stranger: Highlight of Austin’ s week-long Free Festival

“With obvious radio singles “Nighttime” and “Under,” the international fourpiece mixed the glossy energy of New Wave with a modern, alt-rock edge, anchored by Croatian singer/bassist Tessie S-Woodgate”. – Austin Powell, Austin Chronicle

January 16th 2011

INTERVIEW AT AUSTIN MUSIC AND ENTERTAINMENT:

People You Should Know: Tessie Stranger of Intimate Stranger

BBC Radio

‘Held’ – the second single from Intimate Stranger’s album ‘Under’ featured and reviewed on BBC Radio 6

Live at tne Knitting Factory Brooklyn 15th Jan 2011
Photo by Jeremy Gordon

“With powerful stage presence,Tessie’s vocals immediately grab the listener. Her singing combined with atmospheric guitar effects, soaring synth melodies and solid drum rhythm had concertgoers energized and dancing along

Visit Intimate Stranger shop for more details

Intimate Stranger is a Chilean band that started on 2006 in London, under the duo Tessie y Lautaro. Playing in various underground clubs, back in Chile Mogles joins in 2007, and that same year Ismael was asked to join to play the keyboards. Intimate Stranger is setting they next tour for Argentina, by the end of the year they will launch their second studio album that is still in the works before their United States tour.

Spin Earth witnessed their performance in Santiago, Chile last August 13th.

Tessie rolls and plays so intense, so sensual and elegant, showing off her voice all over the SCD Bellavista stage (Author Rights Society), a place for all types of musicians to perform on an almost daily basis. Lautaro Vera rips his guitar with a “noise/shoegazer” mix that gives us a British club ambiance. Mogles bangs his drums and doesn’t give a break to Ismael’s keyboard, which sets the mood for Tessie’s bass. They all carry the show to a high level presentation.

They showed some of their first album “Life Jacket”, and a sample of they second one, which is almost at the top of the most prominent music sites online with songs like Eva, Under, For Annie, Back In The Box.

After the show, Lautaro tell us that he’s working on developments to help local bands (Casino, Javiera, Mena, The Ganjas) to perform in US, country in which Intimate Stranger is scheduled to visit next March for they promotional tour before their mini tour in Argentina next November. Tessie (English-Croat descendant), also comments how she sees her audience’s reaction their performance sang in English.

Tessie: People approach me saying “I liked your performance, but I think that the majority of the audience would prefer it in Spanish”.

Lau: Why not sing in English? Our audience and us listen to English spoken songs all the time, besides, it is the lead market in music.

SPINearth: Actually you are in amazon.com, a site where many Chilean bands are not, is that commercially a step ahead?

Lautario: It is our launch platform of choice, because it’s cheap, the online sales don’t give you the pressure to make albums. Indeed places like itunes, e-music and other music sites give you the chance to show a song after you finished it. We made contact with a German record label that allocates our work at 90% of online sites.

SPINearth: How you see the local music scene?

Tessie: We believe is fine, our band left Chile three years ago and now that we return, a change is notorious; there’s more places to perform and more bands.

Lautaro: It’s ok, if you compare to foreign band scenes that I like, there’s still things to do.

Intimate Stranger members: Tessie Stranger (vocals/bass), Lau Stranger (guitar/backing vocal), Mogles (drums), Ismael Palma (keyboards).