CARINA ROUND - 'The First Blood Mystery' debut album
Released 14/05/01 on Animal Noise records (ANICD114)
Tracks: Message To Apollo, Lightbulb Song, How I See It, The Waves, Let It Fall, Ribbons, On Leaving

"My first memories are of when I would put on 'Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall' and hide inside the curtains to be alone. I was too young for the lyrics to really register, so I used to just make up my own: 'we have the bees flying through wide suns'... and so on.'

Carina was born an Anglo-Italian in the stark surroundings of Wolverhampton's Low Hill area in 1979 (where she and her mother were later burgled five times in one month and had their car burnt out) and brought up in Heath Town.

With little interest in her outside surroundings she found nourishment in discovering her mothers Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan and Roxy Music records, amongst other things.

"My grandfather would sing ALL the time. I'd follow him around just to hear him. He would inspire these daydreams in me about music and poetry, which I would later be in trouble for nearly every day at school."

"I always had a 'knowing' that I wanted to sing. Even as a child I could always sense a kind of musical meaning. I wanted to express it, and did: although I didn't pick up a guitar until I was fourteen, then it really took over. I would hide in the wardrobe on school days until my mother went to work and then spend all day listening to records alone. I'd just crank it and scream and wreck the house. We'd get letters of complaint from the school and neighbours. It was like a real sense of purpose, because school never gave me that. I felt like 'physical graffiti' was teaching me more of what I needed to know."

In the summer of '96, following a gig in a basement acoustic club in the town, Carina was given a three-night support at Ronnie Scott¹s club in Birmingham.

One thing led to another and over the next couple of years she played solo in many of the city's acoustic clubs.

By 1999 she was touring up and down the country with the likes of David Gray, Ben Christophers, Miles Hunt (The Wonder Stuff), Mark Eitzel (A.M.C), Cousteau (from who Liam McKahey and Davey Ray Moor guest on the album) and most recently Elbow, Turin Brakes, Ed Harcourt, Matthew Jay and Ryan Adams with whom she co-wrote the track 'Idiots Dance' and they performed it at the Birmingham, Manchester and London shows.

The following months saw Carina joined by Simon Smith on double-bass and Marcus Galley on drums.

Their first gig together was a special one-off supporting Coldplay at the Birmingham Songwriters Festival, then it was straight into the studio with producer and friend Gavin Monaghan. The album was recorded and mixed in ten days.

Entitled 'THE FIRST BLOOD MYSTERY', the album contains seven spellbinding songs.

"'The three blood mysteries' is a theory by psychologist Erich Neumann. The first, for a woman, is the primary transcendental step into knowing her own creativity…"

The raw, live feel of the album expresses how Carina is in her element on the live stage.This is an enticing and challenging record, full of intimate musings to raw outpourings bearing all their hungers, energies, tensions and presence.

The album finishes with a maelstrom of elemental spirits in the track On Leaving.

"We are spit from the earth's mouth and find something that can truly take us out of our skins. If we're reaching that stage, then it must be special, no matter how much doubt may come. Extremes excite me. I discovered that when you're at the point of being moved you can lose the feeling of being in awe and feel the affinity and that there are no rules".

Raw nerve, bluesy soul from twenty one year old whose songs expose and give rise to some of the deepest nuances of the human condition, expressed from ghostly intimacies to un-restrained outpourings, creating soul stirring dynamics, that have been reflected strongest in the live setting so far.
"A compelling figure on stage, she appeared utterly and understandably absorbed by her music as she allowed that immense voice to penetrate the venues every nook and cranny. At once robust, esoteric, raucous and tender". - THE BIRMINGHAM POST
"Avoice of depth and intensity that has travelled up from a subterranean cavern of the blues" - WHAT'S ON
"From caverns measureless to man" - THE BEAT

LATEST: Carina's debut album 'The First Blood Mystery' will be released 14 May 2001 Animal Noise Records!!!