As you can see if you surf around, there is a lot of work happening around the site -

- The tour section is completely up to date, featuring all set lists and gorgeous pictures!

- Abnormally Attracted To Sin album page is complete

- Midwinter Graces and American Doll Posse album pages are nearing the end stage of completion

- Tour book section is under construction

- Interviews section is under construction

- Images section is under construction

- Downloads section is under construction

Forum news

- Lots of mp3 and video downloads, reviews, set lists, pics and more from Tori’s summer tour (including the silver rain broadcast of Tori’s first and only concert in Russia, and gorgeous HD videos of her show in Paris)

- lots of chatter and speculation about her performance with The Metropole Orchestra in Amsterdam next month

- and even more chatter and speculation about her next project (highly interesting stuff!)

- Lip Sync Contest 2.0 is in effect!! The last one was so much fun, we just had to do it again. Check out all the info HERE

We’ve been very busy bees!

Tori’s stylist and friend Karen Binns has recently launched What?! magazine, and Tori is featured on the cover (and inside!) of the fourth edition, looking utterly fabulous.

In the editorial, Karen writes:

On the cover of this issue we have my long-time friend and sista Tori Amos, which I guess speaks for itself. She is one of the most insanely attractive people of our time: singer, songwriter, producer and a true Goddess. Knowing and hanging out with Tori is like flying on a silver carpet with candied apples and red wine. She has been an inspiration to my creative being for the last 17 years. Tori is the true channeler of our times, her success is not from the size of her wardrobe but from the spirit of her blood. Her Goddess is always on tap. She was born with that ‘thing’ you just can’t purchase, manipulate or steal – it’s orginial without a price. Not forgetting to mention her dedication to her charity/hotlineRAINN – Rape, Absue, and Incest National Network (www.rainn.org).

You can read a behind the scenes perspective written by make up artist Nora Nonah over at Style Canteen, or head over to the forum where there is MUCH discussion over these pics. ]]> http://www.feeltheword.net/news/2010/03/14/what/feed/ 0 http://www.feeltheword.net/news/2009/05/01/lp33tv-interview-part-4/ http://www.feeltheword.net/news/2009/05/01/lp33tv-interview-part-4/#comments Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:15:45 +0000 Lavendula http://www.feeltheword.net/news/?p=1459

Tori Amos SXSW

“I Don’t Agree that Music Is Disposable”

At her recent standing-room-only performance at this year’s South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Tori Amos premiered songs from her tenth studio album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, due May 19th. It’s her first studio LP since 2007’s American Doll Posse, and the record finds the singer-pianist exploring familiar territory: power in all its guises, be it sexual, monetary or political. “Before, we used to think power was if you had a job and you had money,” she says. “And if that’s our definition of success, then very few people have it — the money part anyway. So [I’m] redefining what it means, because power is also an aphrodisiac.” Working once again with her husband, engineer Mark Hawley, Amos says that the album’s production is key. “Sound is an instrument,” she explains. “It’s not just, ‘Let’s jam.’ ”

But visuals were central to the record, too: the LP will be accompanied by a series of 16 “visualettes,” short films that Amos largely funded herself that were directed by Christian Lamb. The footage, captured during Amos’ world tour in support for American Doll Posse, actually inspired the songs that would become Abnormally Attracted to Sin. “I’d see montages of our life on the road,” she says, “and I’d shut off the music, realizing this music is not the underscoring for what I’m seeing at all.” Near the end of the tour, she started writing the songs because she knew that Lamb’s films “needed another story. I said, I wanna give people something that says my favorite thing: If it’s too loud, turn it up. I wanna give people creative worlds to walk into so that they are getting a sensory overload.

You give people treasures, not ‘How can I cut all the costs?’ ” Though the project took money out of her pocket, it was important to Amos, she says, because “people are just putting out the worst. And I don’t agree that music is disposable.” Her own music certainly has staying power — especially for the die-hard fans that pack her shows hoping to hear early cuts. “I’m a different person,” she says, “but the songs, the faces, the life experience or the fantasies that you assign to certain songs in order for you to perform them, and to let them live in you, change. So when I perform them now, if I do ‘Winter’ or ‘Silent All These Years’ [both from Amos’ platinum debut, Little Earthquakes], I’ve surprised myself what stories, what photographs come up in my mind. And that’s why I do insert the catalog, because I don’t see it as my past, I see the songs as timeless for me. It’s just my perception that needs to change.”

Amos’ new music will be her first to come out on Universal Music. She landed the new deal after stumbling into a label rep while she was at lunch — with other, smaller distribution companies. The rep passed her table, said hello and took a phone call from “my boss’ boss,” Amos recalls: Doug Morris, the Chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group. As Amos was finishing lunch, she noticed the woman still outside the restaurant, pacing and talking on her cell. “And in that moment, my life flashed before my eyes,” she says. “I thought, Doug Morris. He’s right there. We haven’t talked in 14 years. I miss Doug Morris. We didn’t always agree, but he’s still passionate about music. “I put all my mother’s training of manners and everything I know to be right and good in the world, and I walked up and I looked at this woman who I’d barely met and interrupted her call, and said, ‘Would you send Doug my love?’ And she looked at me and said, ‘Right now?’ I said, ‘Now would be good.’ ”

The first thing you notice about Tori Amos, besides her still-vivid red hair, is that she’s a total press pro.

She greets me like an old friend, compliments me on my dress, and stretches out on the couch like a ten-year-old watching TV, even though it’s the first time we’ve ever met.

It’s no surprise; after all, the iconic musician has been wooing audiences for nearly 20 years. On the eve of her new release, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, Amos opened up to NYLON about making it on Broadway, singing duets, and fighting your way up the alt-music world’s ranks.

I hear you’re working on a musical right now. How’s that going?

I’m getting put through my paces, in a good way. I guess what that is, is that the project still has a green light. For a while it was the only thing that I thought about creatively. Samuel Adamson and I had been put together as a team a few years ago. And we’re at a stage now where, after we’ve turned in the first draft, the producer, who’s here in New York, said, “Okay great. Let’s roll up our sleeves now.”

Any idea when it will open?

Well, we want to have the draft—a real working draft—top to tail done by the end of the year, and then, I think, start going into proper workshops with it.

So you’re doing a musical, you’ve inspired a comic book, you’ve put out albums…is there anything you haven’t done that you’d really love to do?

Yeah, I’m sure there is. [Laughs] That’s so funny. Well I haven’t done a Christmas record. There are all kinds of things I haven’t done…I haven’t done a duets record.

Would you do it with anyone in particular?

Ben Harper—I just ran into him at SXSW. But if I did a duets record, I think it’d be really fun to do 12 to 14 songs with different people, different styles, different worlds. When I ran into Ben again after many years, I realized [a duets album] is something I could enjoy doing—working with people that not only you respect, but that you get a great buzz with.

With the increased digitalization of music, did you approach your new album any differently?

Well, I wanted to deliver a beautiful package and I know that this is a time when packaging is becoming obsolete and it’s all very disposable. Sometimes I’ll look at packaging and think, “Oh my God, why did you even waste the trees?” Having such an affinity with the visual world, I don’t capitulate to the fears out there. I think that there’s got to be somebody who embraces the visual side in a digital sonic age and weaves it in there. We’re trying to understand this wild west of digital format, and visuals are going to be involved. How is yet being defined, [but] I thought if each song [from the new album] had its own little movie.

How do you manage to stay relevant and still connect with your audience, after nearly 20 years making music?

Well, you have to be interested and excited about what you’re doing. As you develop enough life experience, you’ve got to value what that is. Youth does not have that. Youth has a lot but it doesn’t have any fucking wisdom. That’s not negative, it’s just like, I don’t have lineless skin, and you don’t get these lines without living. I know that sometimes the culture only values the teenage perspective, but there are other perspectives, too. And when you’re about ready to jump off a cliff, I don’t know if talking about shopping is going to get you through it.

Is it any easier to be taken seriously as a young female musician?

Sure. In some ways, there are a lot of opportunities for musicians now that were really tough in 1990. There are a lot of outlets now that you didn’t have then. I think there are so many opportunities as a new female artist, and as a new male artist as well. There seems to be a lot more out there now, and I think that’s exciting.

So it’s not so much a matter of changing norms, but rather of people who can take advantage of it?

Well, and you’ve got to get through the fact that the aphrodisiac is the new, the next thing. It’s like a fix, [the public] needs the next one to be consumed with, and then the next one. What’s changed—and what needs to happen now—is that they are able to keep coming back to artists as they change and grow. They do have something to say, they just have a different fight now.

REBECCA WILLA DAVIS