Sonya Aurora Madan

ICE QUEEN: Sonya Aurora Madan
BAND: echobelly
ORIGIN: London, UK
GENRE: Brit Pop
ACCOMPLICES: Glenn Johansson (guitar), Debbie Smith (guitar), Alex Keyser (bass), Andy Henderson (drums)
DISCOGRAPHY: "Everyone's Got One", "On", "Lustra", "People Are Expensive", "Gravity Pulls"
INFLUENCES: Shiv Kumar Sharma, Zakir Hussain, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, The Beatles, The Smiths, Frank Black, Kid Koala, Charles Mingus, Shane McGowan, The Dandy Warhols, Leftfield, Bob Dylan, Arcade Fire, Morrissey, Ben Harper, REM, Ravi Shankar, Pixies and all the others...

IMHO: The mid-nineties were great, musically speaking. Brit Pop was the soundtrack to many of my nights out with friends, and bands like Echobelly made you happy to be alive. I remember we used to go dancing on Thursday nights to clubs like "New York New York" and "Panam's", downtown Barcelona, and danced the night away to "Great things" and other great anthems thinking life was beautiful. Yeah... Friday mornings were not so popular in the university... We had a tendency to skip the first class and show up droopy-eyed around 11a. Those were the good times, when you think life awaits for you with great surprises. For all I know, "Panam's" became a prostibule later on.
Sonya Aurora Madan sings so well. She's been called a female Morrissey, but I don't see that resemblance anywhere. I just know that the first two Echobelly albums are masterpieces of powerpop and every song is great in them. Skipping and bouncing around guaranteed. If Justine Frischmann from Elastica was the enfant terrible of Britpop, Sonya always played the role of the cute-happy-go-lucky girl next door. Was she? That we don't know.

FAVOURITE SONG: "Insomniac", "Call me names", "Give her a gun", "Today Tomorrow Sometimes Never", "Car Fiction", "Natural Animal", "Dark Therapy", blah blah blah
FAVOURITE ALBUMS: "Everyone's got one", "On"

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