Desire Avenue

[Virginia Astley is my favourite female artist, although Stina is extremely close in second place, with Kate Bush lagging slightly behind in third.

Virginia has never made any videos for her work but has appeared on British tv three times,most recently ten years ago when she was interviewed by Jools Holland regarding her father's (tv & film composer Edwin Astley) music.

Of her two appearence's back in the 1980's,one seemingly has been lost forever but amazingly,footage of her television debut (credited to 1982 but more likely 1983) suddenly appeared out of the blue on You Tube last year.

The song, Waiting To Fall, has only ever appeared on a Some Bizarre compilation album but this is a unique live performance of the song,recorded in a tv studio.

Virginia Astley : Waiting To Fall

Her voice is so out of its time. Beautiful song. Whenever I hear anything of hers I always start off thinking 'oh no, this is so twee' and then end up unable to stop listening.

She makes me think of the composer Delius, in a way. Meaning that her world is so much her own, she really doesn't make any concessions at all to contemporary taste.

Yep, sounds like a teenage girl, and none the worse for that.

Mind you, someone should tell her that the Rite of Spring was written 100 years ago, she has a bit of musical evolution to encounter. Her melody and harmony is fantastically naive, like that 'garden' album she made.

I love that album!!

I'm assuming Rob must have sent me it back in the mists of time, I remember when I first put it on I couldn't believe how something so innocent and pure could exist in the music world. Very much like a sheltered middle-class English schoolgirl singing to herself with no thought to what anyone else might make of it. I loved that about it.

Incidentally, although Stina's musical and narrative world is obviously much darker than Virginia's, it's that same sense of someone sitting in a room singing quietly to themselves that pulled me into her work initially. There's something about that feeling of total immersion in one's own inner world I find compelling.

'Waiting To fall' was inspired by an edition of Panorama about a guy on death row in the States, which does tend to be at odds with the songs delivery somewhat.

Beth, I think I may have sent you a copy of 'From Gardens......' via Dave or maybe Dave sent you a copy of the copy I sent him? That whole period does seem like a very long time ago now.