Arguably the biggest thing to come from Abergavenny in Wales, Marina Diamandis was born to a Greek  father and Welsh  mother.  When they split, she lived for a couple of years with her dad but moved home to finish school. From there, in 2005, is was off to the West London Music School, Vocaltech.

She tried out for all of the West End musicals but there was no joy, so she started a band; Marina and the Diamonds. Their early days were anything but glamorous, they found someone on Gumtree to produce for them and released the Mermaid Vs. Sailor EP in 2007, selling a total of 70 copies of it through their MySpace page.

A couple of months later, though, they were spotted by Warner who are behind the release of their second EP The Crown Jewels. Eventually, in February 2010, Marina and the Diamonds got to release an album, The Family Jewels, which hit number five in the UK Charts.

In a genius piece of marketing, and reaching out to her fans (who she calls her ‘diamonds’), Marina asked them to crate their own video for the song I Am Not a Robot, log and post it on YouTube and see who’d get the most votes. The results have been, shall we say, varied.

Marina’s music is hard to pin-down, she describes herself as “an indie artist with pop goals”, and “a DIY musician” and mentions both PJ Harvey and Britney Spears as influences. Hmmm, you don’t see those two in a sentence together often. She also can’t say enough about musician Daniel Johnston

He really opened me up to a whole new world of music and a whole new perception of what an artist is. For me, he really encouraged me because if you think of someone who has been spoon-fed pop, up until twenty-one years old, and you hear someone like Daniel Johnston you’re like “God, this is terrible, but I love it.” It sounds like a child has made it, like, the production is so all over the place. He’s obviously got something very captivating here yet he doesn’t fit the normal mould and people still love him.

I thought “if he can do it then [so can I],” that’s when I started to produce things myself and play live, even though I wasn’t even great on the piano. It’s all about emotion and if you have heart, people connect to that.

It’s very early in the life of Marina and the Diamonds, but they seem to be bubbling under and ready to explode into the bigtime. We need some real talent on the radio and in our iPods. Bring it Marina.

Official Site

The Family Jewels

Hollywood

I Am Not A Robot

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