Rachael Dadd

The British indie folk musician Rachael Dadd crafts songs that merge elegance, delight, and exploration in balanced proportion. Her approach draws upon British folk roots while folding in an array of additional elements such as D.I.Y. experimentalism, serialism, pastoral psychedelia, and electronic music, producing an overall playfulness and wide-eyed curiosity that enhances her tuneful instincts. Straightforward acoustic performances marked her initial outings, among them the 2005 album Summer/Autumn Recordings. More intricate and densely textured productions surfaced on releases such as 2011's Bite the Mountain. By 2019's Flux and 2022's Kaleidoscope her compositions had developed into combinations of acoustic and electric sounds that incorporated broader dynamic range without relinquishing the tender core of her material.

Rachael Dadd grew up in Bristol, located in South West England. Music enthusiasts themselves, her parents supplied a small keyboard when she reached age seven, prompting eager self-taught playing. Several years afterward the household acquired a piano, on which she figured out chords and melodies independently of formal instruction. At thirteen she encountered Tori Amos' Little Earthquakes, whose emotional force captivated her; she attended an Amos concert where the artist encouraged the young admirer and kissed her cheek. Further female songwriters such as Kate Bush, Joni Mitchell, and PJ Harvey shaped her sensibility, while an A-levels instructor expanded her musical perspective. During school Dadd met composer John Tavener, who visited her class as a guest lecturer; she also generated experimental pieces, appeared in student jazz concerts, and examined twentieth-century composers including John Cage and Steve Reich. Reich's serialist compositions exerted particular sway through their fusion of rhythm and melody. Electronic artists such as Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, and Broadcast likewise informed her direction.

Dadd launched her recording career in 2005 via two projects: the self-released collaboration Songs from the Crypt with the Missing Scissors and the solo Cleaner Records album Summer/Autumn Recordings. She issued 2007's The World Outside Is in a Cupboard, again on Cleaner, after which the Japanese label Angel's Egg arranged to release Summer/Autumn Recordings in Japan. Work with Japanese artists resulted in a schedule dividing each year between England and an island in Hiroshima prefecture, where she composed, performed, and produced textile art. There she encountered experimental musician ICHI from Nagoya; the pair later collaborated musically, married, and divided time between England and Japan. Another self-released album, 2008's After the Ant Fight, preceded her 2010 debut on Broken Sound, the limited-edition six-song EP Moth in the Motor. Recorded with ICHI and additional Japanese musicians, 2011's Bite the Mountain constituted a full-length effort.

Dadd's first Talitres release, 2014's We Resonate, combined folk and experimental currents across studio and home sessions in Bristol. 2019's Flux ranked among her most polished and studio-oriented statements to that point, enlisting Portishead bassist Jim Barr, vocalists Kate Stables and Rozi Plain of This Is the Kit, and multi-instrumentalist Emma Gatrill, recognized for collaborations with Matthew and the Atlas and Willie Mason. The album also marked her initial North American issue, distributed in the U.S. by Memphis Industries. May 2022 brought the EP Flux Alchemy, Pt. 1, containing remixes of six Flux tracks reinterpreted by assorted artists, followed by a second volume the next month. Amid COVID-19 lockdowns Dadd contributed to the traveling art project Super Cool Drawing Machine, which benefited closed independent venues, while writing songs alongside visual pieces created on her sewing machine. Those compositions supplied the foundation for Kaleidoscope, issued in October 2022 and characterized by her as among her most personal statements; Rob Pemberton, previously associated with U.K. indie folk act the Staves, produced the LP.