Wolverhampton's Grammy contenders MAMA ft. Antonella to play Birmingham
Wolverhampton-based multiplatinum producer Gavin Monaghan and his author fiancée, Antonella Gambotto-Burke, who, as MAMA ft. Antonella have just been placed into the first ballot for Best New Artist and Best Rock Album by the GRAMMY Awards® committee, are playing Birmingham on October 30.
Industry buzz has been building around the duo since the release of their debut album Apex Predators. The gritty, nine-track, lo-fi masterpiece was described by veteran music critic Kris Needs, in Electronic Sound Magazine, as, “a riveting stone killer, supercharged with searing intensity and fried circuit gumbo that'll barbecue your ham-hocks.”
Eighteen months in the making, Apex Predators began as Gambotto-Burke’s vision: a narrative of loss ending in tenderness.
“We spent I don’t know how many nights in Gavin’s Wolverhampton studio,” Gambotto-Burke, then based in Folkestone, remembers. “Generally, this was from 7pm to 5am, and we both always had to work the next day. I would travel up two or three times a month by coach and train to see Gavin and write or record. There were weeks we were so exhausted we could barely function, but the album was, for me, the green light at the end of the dock. Creating it was a compulsion.”
So how do they feel about being included in the GRAMMY Awards® first ballot for not just one, but two of the primary categories?
Monaghan, calling from Magic Garden Studio, says, “Truthfully? Incredibly surprised. And so, so honoured that their committee deemed us eligible.”
Gambotto-Burke had a different response.
“I stopped breathing for a minute or ten,” she says, laughing, “but then the whirlwind of work took over. That had to happen, or I would have imploded.”
Author of the controversial Apple: Sex, Drugs, Motherhood and the Recovery of the Feminine, a book about the relationship between medicalised birth and increasingly prevalent social issues such as drug and alcohol addiction, Gambotto-Burke has taken refuge in writing new music and her first novella.
“I’m 20,000 words into the novella, and we’re also working on two simultaneous albums - the second and the third, as it happens, while performing the first.”
Why, I ask, would anyone choose to make two albums simultaneously?
Again, Gambotto-Burke laughs. “Gavin composes the backing music for MAMA when the spirit takes him, and then I choose the pieces that speak to me. I need to feel inspired, or nothing happens. Not always helpful, but that’s how I write melodies and lyrics. Some of Gavin’s compositions didn’t fit with the vibe of the second album but I really loved them, so we started on a third album for those.”
Refusing to elaborate on the genre or themes of MAMA’s next two albums, Gambotto-Burke will only reveal that they are “very different” to their debut.
“Rather than pander to genre, we want to come from a place of lyrical and musical integrity,” she says. “Our ultimate aim is to create the purest sonic beauty.”
Along with former Birmingham Conservatoire professor Jonathan Day, Finnish critic Mikko Ihalainen likened Gambotto-Burke’s “magnificent” voice to Robert Plant’s and her lyrics to Patti Smith’s. In a similar vein, bestselling author and Membranes founder John Robb recommended that those “still hankering for the wilder god of Nick Cave at his most poetic and passionate” turn to Antonella, who has “the widescreen vocal and poetic imagery to match and beyond.”
Incredibly, MAMA have, until now, only played five gigs. “We only played our first gig in April this year, three weeks before the release of Apex Predators, which is actually insane,” she says. “Four festivals and one sold-out gig supporting S E N S E S at Coventry. And that, quite literally, is it.”
Monaghan adds, “It’s difficult for me to find time to gig because I’m always in the studio, often until 4am, but when we gig, I always have the best time. Gigging in my youth was a nightmare, whereas this has been absolutely brilliant.”
In terms of the band’s oeuvre, the October 30 Rock and Roll Brewhouse gig is significant: it will be the first MAMA ft. Antonella headline gig.
“On the day before Hallowe’en, too,” Gambotto-Burke says. “It’s also the premiere of our first single from the second album, so I can’t wait!”
GRAMMY Awards® committee, watch this band closely.
Catch MAMA ft. Antonella, supported by Esore Alle, at the Rock and Roll Brewhouse, 19 Hall Street, Birmingham B18 6BS.
Doors open at 7pm. Tickets through Skiddle.
