Keith Christmas : iSOUND.COM™

Biography

Keith Christmas recorded his first album Stimulus back in 1969 when he also played the acoustic guitar on David Bowie's first album Space Oddity and appeared at the first Glastonbury Festival. Throughout the Seventies he recorded four more albums, 'Fable of the Wings', 'Pygmy', Brighter Day' and 'Stories From the Human Zoo' while touring with and supporting acts like The Who, King Crimson, Ten Years After, Frank Zappa, and Roxy Music.
He stopped playing through the '80s then formed the blues band 'Weatherman' in 1991 with some friends, and a CD of the same name was released in 1992 The band played clubs and festivals for the next few years and then in 1996 Keith started to write a different kind of material that led by coincidence to the release of a new CD 'Love Beyond Deals' and featured many notable members of the UK Roots music scene. Q Magazine described it as "Undoubtedly the best thing he's ever done. 10 songs with a real sense of character, mystery and romance....a luxuriant sound somewhere between a rollicking jug band and the wistful tone of recent Chris Smithers albums." He was described at the time by a major festival promoter as "a songwriter at the peak of his powers".
In 2000 his CD 'Weatherman' was reissued and since then all Keith's old vinyl material has been reissued on CD. In 2001 Woronzow asked Keith if he would like to make an instrumental guitar CD, and he started the 'Acoustica' project that would take much of his spare time over the next eighteen months. It was a fascinating and eye-opening experience for Keith as using a computer sequencer for the first time he was able to take full control of all aspects of the recording and to take the time he needed to produce the results he wanted. He was also, for the first time, able to concentrate solely on his guitar playing as a medium in itself, instead of an accompaniment, and was able to experiment with new styles and techniques.
In January 2003 'Acoustica' was released to excellent reviews - 'absolutely brilliant', 'this is a quite exceptional piece of work', 'lavish and overwhelming', 'a beautiful album' are a small sample. In January 2004 Sanctuary Records released the long-awaited compilation of Keith's first 3 albums from 1969 to 1971. It is an 80-minute compilation selected by the artist and digitally remastered from the original 1/4 inch studio masters at the Townhouse Studios in London. It is entitled 'Timeless and Strange', the sound is excellent and is a true digital remix bringing out more of the original tonal range than the original. It is quite rare to be able to remaster from the original 15 ips master reels.
Keith is now gigging again and has just released his first ever solo CD, 'Light of the Dawn'. There are music samples, free MP3 downloads and much more information on Keith's website http://www.keithchristmas.co.uk.