BROOKE FRASER

NEW SINGLE: “BETTY” OUT NOW!! TAKEN FROM Debut Album: Flags (out now) –

‘Betty’ – BBC Radio 2 ‘Record of The Week’

+ now on National playlists in Ireland including RTE2fm + out on iTunes now!

“A compelling darkness and intensity lurks under the surface of the best of these songs” – Uncut

“The precocious teen has blossomed into a mature artist” – Q

“This is an artist comfortable with her craft, confident of the direction it’s taking” – BBC

RTE & BBCRadio 2 favourite Brooke Fraser returns to Ireland this Autumn for an Academy Show Oct 9^th after her sold out Dublin show earlier this year. Already a multi-platinum selling artist in her native New Zealand, Brooke has seen both her Irish singles enjoy phenomenal success at debut ‘Something in the Water’ spending months on radio playlists weeks on the A list. Meanwhile, the album from which they were taken, Flags, secured praise from Uncut and Q Magazine- no mean feat for a young artist making her UK & Irish debut with an entirely self-produced and self-written album.

This impressive response is just a reflection of the wider international success Brooke has garnered so far this year- her Something in The Water EP debuted at #1 in Germany and Austria, with the lead single achieving top ten radio play in Italy and Germany. Flags has established a firm bed of American support, with a top five iTunes chart debut and a sold-out 18 date tour earlier this year.

A self-taught singer and songwriter from an early age, Brooke Fraser signed to Sony when she was eighteen, and released her first album in New Zealand in 2002. It debuted at number one, stayed in her native top ten for a year, and eventually went eight times platinum: an astonishing feat for an artist so young. Fraser went on to support the likes of David Bowie and John Mayer, before penning her second album, ‘Albertine’. This saw her success expand to America, where she toured extensively, entered the Billboard Top 100 chart and climbed to number five on the digital retailers’ US album chart.

Still aged just 26, Brooke Fraser has made her third album in ‘Flags’, but it’s the first that she’s releasing in the UK & Ireland. It is very much the synthesis of the sounds and stories that got her to this point. Fraser grew up in what she describes as a “less than affluent” part of Wellington, largely indifferent to the influx of musical imports from the rest of the world.  Her home, however, was filled with seminal records by the likes of Carole King, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison. Unfortunately, her brother broke the vinyl player, so she grew up with them only in the visual sense. The revelatory moment came one afternoon when her friend’s mum was driving them to netball practice: James Taylor came on the radio, and Brooke suddenly put two and two together. It kick started an obsession with classic singers and songwriters that would feed into the music that she makes to this day.

Brooke’s also used her considerable success as a platform for various charitable projects that she is passionate about. In 2005, she took a trip to Rwanda, 11 years after a genocide that claimed the lives of nearly one million people, and went on to partner with World Vision in sponsoring children and water projects in the region. For the release of ‘Something In The Water’, she aligned herself with a New York organisation called Charity Water, who have set out a rigorous plan to get clean water to everyone in the world within 40 years. Brooke’s ‘Birthday’ scheme (where fans are invited to leave money rather than giving presents) has already raised over $50,000 for the charity. More details on the organisation itself are available here: http://www.charitywater.org/

+ IRISH LIVE DATE ANNOUNCED!:

Oct 9^th Academy, Dublin €17.50

Links: www.brookefraser.com

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