Reuben Wu did a soundtrack for a promotional video

Reuben Wu did a soundtrack for a promotional video titled "Over 2 Million Containers, 2,000 Routes - GE" for GE:



The music is excellent and it sounds like Ladytron and Orbital. The video is great too, because it's synchronized with the music. More details from this site:

In an attempt to "artistically demonstrate the complexity involved in the tightly-orchestrated intermodal process that is required to move goods", GE and Barbarian Group collaborated with Reuben Wu, of British band Ladytron, to create a new music video (of sorts) called "Over 2 Million Containers, 2000 Routes".

To create the music for the video, Wu integrated organic terminal sounds from CSX Intermodal Terminal in North Baltimore, Ohio with original instrumentation. The video takes the terminal sounds and original music, and creates a natural fit for the them "synchronized against key moments in the intermodal process". This may all sound very complicated and clinical, but the video succeeds at making this process appealing, giving the viewer an idea of all the complexity that goes into the "tightly-orchestrated intermodal process" in a way that is actually enjoyable.

"The Hunter" featured on TEC's 30 Best Songs of 2013 list

"The Hunter" featured on The Electricity Club's 30 Best Songs of 2013 list. The list is sorted alphabetically by artist names. The song was introduced with this paragraph:

"Ladytron's Helen Marnie released her long awaited debut solo album Crystal World in the summer. Recorded in Iceland, it suitably captured the island's beautifully relaxed but volatile atmosphere. Its opening track "The Hunter" was a tremendous calling card and the vibrant electropop single that Ladytron never quite got round to releasing. Very pretty and delectably glacial, the tune was vocally and musically expansive like an Arctic escapist fantasy, melancholic but free of doom".

Helen Marnie was also mentioned in End of Year 2013 Review by The Electricity Club:

"Artists who made their name during electroclash such as ADULT. and Miss Kittin made welcome returns in 2013 while also from that era, Ladytron's Helen Marnie released her first solo offering Crystal World; crowd funded via Pledge Music, it was a novel but effective way of securing a promotional budget that involved fans in the process by offering exclusive updates and an opportunity to purchase exclusive memorabilia. In Marnie's case, items on sale ranged from hand written lyric sheets to her Mini-Cooper and a bikini!".

Marnie's "The Hunter" is the third videoclip of the year at The VPME Awards 2013

According to The Von Pip Musical Express, "The Hunter" is the third video of the year.

They posted also this comment: "This was the first glimpse of Marnie's debut album which of course induced ridiculous excitement in VP Towers and no, it had absolutely nothing to do with the latex body suit, what do you take us for? Benny Hill?".

Marnie's "Crystal World" won The VPME's Album of the Year award

Marnie's Crystal World won the Album of the Year award by The Von Pip Musical Express! This site also gave a 5/5 rating and review to this album. Here's the message from The VPME:

Yes, our favourite album of 2013 comes from Ladytron singer Helen Marnie, we described the album as "a hugely emotive record which sees Helen step out from behind her mysterious sultry Ladytron persona and reveal herself to be a songwriter of enormous emotional depth and honesty, able to produce songs which are poetic, fragile, heartfelt, and often downright heart-breakingly beautiful. In doing so she demonstrates just how inspiring, poignant, and engaging pop music can be when it's produced with such eloquence and sincerity. If this album genuinely doesn't move you then we can only conclude your sorry excuse for a soul is as withered, empty and indeed as tiny as Jeremy Clarkson's emaciated little scrotum".

Upon accepting her magnificent "Pipster" award Helen said, "I had no idea how the album would be received so was pretty nervous. I've never won an award! Also, I never thought my name and Jeremy Clarkson's scrotum would appear on the same page. Now that is quite something! Thanks again x".

Check also this review and interview.

"Gravity the Seducer Remixed" was released on 29 November

Gravity the Seducer Remixed was released on 29 November as limited-edition blue vinyl. Probably it will be released also as digital download on iTunes and/or Amazon.

Track listing:

Side A
1. White Elephant (Strange Fruit Remix)
2. Mirage (Mixhell Remix)
3. White Gold (Tarsius Remix)
4. Ace of Hz (Punks Jump Up Remix)
5. Ritual (Reset! Remix)
6. Moon Palace (ARIISK Remix)

Side B
1. Altitude Blues (Outfit Remix)
2. Ambulances (Gosteffects Remix)
3. Melting Ice (The Chaotic Good Remix)
4. Transparent Days (SONOIO Remix)
5. Ninety Degrees (Somekong Remix)
6. Aces High (Ladytron Remix)

Remix "Hearts on Fire" by Marnie

Helen Marnie made the stems of "Hearts on Fire" available for remixing on this page. There's a contest: post your tracks via SoundCloud to the comments section of that page between now and 31 December, and the best remix will get a signed copy of Crystal World on vinyl.

Listen to 4 remixes from "Gravity the Seducer Remixed"

100k pageviews

Today, Ladytron Music site reached over 100,000 pageviews since its beginning in 1 June 2010. Also it appears on the first or the second page of Google Search results for the keyword "ladytron".

Thanks to all visitors.

"Gravity the Seducer Remixed" limited edition announced

Ladytron will release an exclusive limited-edition Gravity the Seducer Remixed blue vinyl on Record Store Day special Black Friday (29 November 2013).

Track listing:

Side A
1. White Elephant (Strange Fruit Remix)
2. Mirage (Mixhell Remix)
3. White Gold (Tarsius Remix)
4. Ace of Hz (Punks Jump Up Remix)
5. Ritual (Reset! Remix)
6. Moon Palace (ARIISK Remix)

Side B
1. Altitude Blues (Outfit Remix)
2. Ambulances (Gosteffects Remix)
3. Melting Ice (The Chaotic Good Remix)
4. Transparent Days (SONOIO Remix)
5. Ninety Degrees (Somekong Remix)
6. Aces High (Ladytron Remix)

Herald Scotland interview (2013)

That's how it starts. A wail and then a synth wash starts beneath it, martial and, yes, a little bit Knight Ridery, rising to the front of the mix as the voice is pushed back. Then the drums kick in and the vocals jump front and centre. What is this? This is pop. Or Helen Marnie's version of the word anyway.

It's also how The Hunter, the opening track on her new solo album Crystal World begins, a first step outside the electronic arms of Liverpool quartet Ladytron, the band she's been a member of throughout the 21st century. And an attempt, she says, to push herself into being "more pop, more pop than Ladytron".

"I would say I am the more pop part of Ladytron, so that was in my head", she tells me over coffee in a Glasgow hotel. "I wanted to write choruses. I'd never worked by hooks and choruses and I wanted to do that".

Marnie has been ringing the changes of late. Towards the end of last year she moved back to Scotland after more than a decade in London (before that she was in Liverpool, where she met the rest of the band). "It was pulling at my heart to come back to Scotland. I got married but he's a southerner and I had to drag him up here".

And before that, and with Ladytron on extended furlough, she had recorded Crystal World, a silvery dream machine of an album on which she sounds a little like Chvrches' Lauren Mayberry's big sister and calls herself by her surname only. "On this I just felt freer to do whatever I wanted. I'm definitely quite open on the record. I think the things I wanted to express are there in the lyrics and the music".

The result is an album with a sci-fi sheen. The cover too. How hard was it to get into those trousers Helen? "A friend of mine in Glasgow, Rebecca Torres, she made these catsuits especially for me. So I owe her big time. I did need help getting into it but the only part I needed help with was getting the leg over my foot. The rest is quite stretchy. It must be my big toes or something".

She looks at the cover lying in front of us. "I think that looks pop. It's quite glossy but also I wanted it to be quite feminine and girly. I'm like a woman who's free". It speaks to the music. "Yes, but without being too clinical".

Crystal World was funded originally by Pledge and is now getting a release on the newly revived Les Disques du Crepuscule label ("Someone said to me the other day 'that was so cool in the eighties' and I was like 'really, I've never heard of it'".)

She's still amazed at the response to her Pledge campaign to help fund the making of her album. It helped that Ladytron's decade as indie electronicists gave her some recognition. "That definitely helped and the reaction was great. It kind of took me offguard. I set a target and we reached the target within a few days, though I have to say the target was quite small.

"I can't say what it was but I have to say it wasn't enough. I think I made over 200% of my target. But it still wasn't quite enough".

That's the pragmatist in her speaking. The dreamer is surprised that anyone would be interested in the first place. "I was quite shocked. I was thinking 'you're going to pay this amount of money for my old bikini? Really'".

Helen Marnie's pop story is the story of an uncool kid who loved Kylie and ABBA and Michael Jackson ("I used to write him letters"), who listened to her brother's Metallica records and studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music and Drama (as was). She dropped out of university in Glasgow before going on to study music in Liverpool where she met the rest of Ladytron. The band named themselves after a Roxy Music track and former Roxy member Brian Eno has been effusive in his praises.

But with her bandmate Mira Aroyo having a baby, Daniel Hunt over in Brazil and Reuben Wu currently living in Chicago the band have been taking their first real break this last year. But it's a pause not an ending. "I think hopefully we'll make a record next year", Marnie says.

In the meantime she has her own record to promote. "I would like to do some live gigs but how to do it, I need to work that out".

This is the start then, not an ending.

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