Glorious Goldfrapp

Band unveil strings and choir for London show

19 April 2008 - Goldfrapp stunned The Royal festival Hall last night with an extension to the band.

Alison and Co. brought in a 16 piece string section and a small choir for their one off gig at the London venue which has recently had its acoustics overhauled - to make it work well for amplified music as well as classical.

Will from the band told 6 Music you can't take that for granted in some of the UK's more prestigious venues:

"Sometimes everything below middle C just becomes like porridge. I think some halls are designed to be acoustically perfect. If Julian Bream was sitting in the middle playing acoustic guitar everyone in the hall can hear, but add 100 decibels of volume to that and it all blows

"It feels like we're in lush opulent land of sonic things."
Will, Goldfrapp

Will says an expansion of their live sound for a special occasion has been brewing for some time:

"We've always talked about doing things with strings, and doing a special event and I think with this album, we thought this was a time to actually go and do it. It feels like we're in lush opulent land of sonic things which is really nice."

He added that for the first time they're in a place where they're happy with every song on the set list - although that’s had to work round their new acoustic sound:

"There has to be some kind of allowance made that Seventh Tree is a very acoustic and different mood of an album, so we have left out a lot of the Supernature, and a lot of the other albums. We've put all of the tunes from Seventh Tree in there but it's been great to pick some of the back catalogue to go around with that."


Jo Youle