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KEM - Intimacy [+digital booklet]

KEM - Intimacy [+digital booklet]

Universal Motown Records singer-songwriter-producer KEM has announced that he will release his third album, Intimacy, preceded by a series of online promotional videos that will reintroduce him to the marketplace by offering an intimate preview of what’s to come. The new CD is the Detroit native’s long awaited follow-up to his critically acclaimed and certified gold 2005 disc, KEM Album II. Intimacy was inspired by KEM’s deeply personal lessons on intimacy and it will allow fans to experience him unlike ever before musically, lyrically, and visually. For the first time in his career, KEM will lay all of his cards on the table and grant fans the opportunity to get up close and personal while delivering a 10-song collection of timeless music for the grown and sexy. Intimacy features vocal and production collaborations with the likes of Grammy-winning soul diva Jill Scott and the late Motown legend David J. Van dePitt, who famously produced Marvin Gaye’s 1971 masterpiece, What’s Going On. Scott delivers enchanting verses of spoken word in “Golden Days,” while Van dePitt arranged the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s string section on the first single, a gorgeous ballad called “Why Would You Stay.” Los Angeles producer Rex Rideout (Luther Vandross, Angie Stone) also joined KEM in the studio to help round out the Intimacy listening experience. The result is a richer sound buttressed by classical instruments and a greater range of musical styles that will certainly expand KEM’s audience by garnering success across multiple formats, including pop, R&B, and urban adult contemporary. - Quoted from Amazon

  • The stunning new effort by internationally acclaimed singer-songwriter David Gray -- begins with those evocative and somewhat mysterious words. What follows is an extraordinary song cycle of rare and timeless power that bears a ra... The stunning new effort by internationally acclaimed singer-songwriter David Gray -- begins with those evocative and somewhat mysterious words. What follows is an extraordinary song cycle of rare and timeless power that bears a rather fitting title. As people today may or may not remember, the word “foundling” is defined as “an infant found after its unknown parents have abandoned it.” And as Gray puts it with a warm laugh, “Foundling sort of arrived at my door without my asking it to, so it felt very appropriate for this album.” In a sense, Foundling also marks another notable arrival -- the second coming of David Gray’s own second coming -- and one that truly “sprung like a wild orchid” in its own right. By 2005, Gray had already enjoyed what has been a rather distinguished career as a singer-songwriter and recording artist, having sold more than 12 million albums, including his global left-field smash, 1998’s White Ladder, which remains the single best selling album in Irish history. Gray had by this point already won two Ivor Novello Awards, a Q award, two Brit nominations and a GRAMMY nomination. But not a man or artist content to ever rest on his laurels, Gray decided that the time has come to shake things up in a significant way. So in 2006, David Gray decided to disband his longtime backing group, and to attempt to reconnect with his music before recording his excellent 2009 album Draw The Line with a new group of players at his studio The Church. “Draw the Line was essentially about the band, and four people playing together in a room,” says Gray. “But you can’t just keep going for unlimited takes. So on days when I felt everyone was getting a bit worn down and frayed at the edges -- and that it might be good to give everyone a little space -- I’d go into the studio on my own or maybe with one other person. I’d either work on tracks we already recorded or try to record other songs with just me on piano or guitar. That’s a lot of what eventually became Foundling. In essence, foundling became an alternate musical universe to Draw The Line. As Gray puts it,“ Foundling was an album done in slices of time in between band recording sessions. Eventually, I had the thought of recording and then mixing two separate albums during the same time period, so I then went back and took a closer look at the tracks and recorded a few overdubs and attempted to add a few finishing touches so that they sounded more complete. That’s how Foundling became like a tapestry that I hung on the other side of The Church. And I kept walking over and making little marks on it, and before you knew it, what started off as a side project was holding my attention as well as the main work.” - Quoted from Amazon »