In the Beginning
The world of Lady A was quite a different one in the early part of the last decade. Our heroine took her first steps into the music realm beating drums and writing some songs for all girl garage combo, Mambo Taxi. Her beats then were certainly more Meg White than Animal though the Taxi's primal racket would take many of today's new breed to task what with the inclusion of Ella Guru's blazing guitar riffs thrown into a cauldron of sound.

Beating the drums was not enough for Anjali. All well celebrating 60's garage-rock if you're a posh white pretty-boy from the Home Counties, but not such a novel idea if your parents were brought over from India for cheap labour & had not such a swinging time. Anjali being neither posh nor a boy but Asian, a girl & working class had plenty that needed saying. The emergent riot grrl scene was to be the medium & Bhatia's multi-racial trailblazers Voodoo Queens would become the scene's most accessible exponents delivering venom with a smile.

As with any scene, be it Hip-Hop or Death Metal, Anjali was soon to discover that Riot Grrl was fraught with contradiction & in-fighting. Not that it really mattered; Riot Grrl's merry noise was soon to be replaced by U.S boy-angst, the major-label subsidised Foxcore of L7 & then bizarrely Brit-pop & lad culture, leaving behind a string of legendary gigs & singles (Huggy Bear's Her Jazz, Cornershop's In the Day of Ford Cortina, Bikini Kill's White Boy & The Voodoo's Supermodel Superficial).

After the Riot - Girls and Machines
In 1995, Anjali performed some new songs she'd written acoustically Upstairs At The Garage. This led to fellow riot-grrl refugee Gary Walker signing her to Wiiija. Like companions & labelmates, Cornershop, her ears were not being enticed by the appalling major-label indie sludge of the New Wave Of New Wave but by the East Coast Hip Hop renaissance of Nas, Gangstarr foundation, the Beasties "Check Your Head" & a strange hybrid of Dancehall, Hip-hop & techno known as Jungle. She decided her new weapon of choice after the drum-kit, guitar & microphone would be the sampler.

After embarking on a music technology course she began experimenting with her basic home set-up, finally producing her first single, "Maharani". It featured scratching from a handsome young blade called Spykid whom she'd met one fateful night at North London's Sausage Machine gig/club where they'd both sometimes DJ. This was to be the beginning of a mythical working relationship to rival Phil/Ronnie Spector, Gainsbourg/Birkin & Miles/Betty Davis.

Visionary Vibes
Maharani's beats recall the rawness of early Wu-Tang productions whilst Anjali's Hindi vocals & Bollywood flourishes if released by Def Jam today would surely ensure her a top twenty hit; Second EP, Ju Ju/Triton's impulse stylings & broken beats are more new jazz than nu-jazz. Aquila's punk-funk vibe would ignite the floor at Return To New York and Feline Woman and specifically b-side Astra, nodded at the magnificence to come.

Spykid, having completed his experimental opus "The Revolution Of Everyday Life" as Echo Park for Lo Recordings featuring a cast of guitar deconstructionists including members of Sonic Youth, Loop & Seefeel, was now ready to embark on a fully fledged collaboration with Lady A.

Evoking the pocket-sized symphonic jazz-psyche genius of David Axelrod & Charles Stepney, Lazy Lagoon's magnitude was perfectly demonstrated by its inclusion on the Real Fidelity compilation alongside Tim Buckley, The Sonics & Beach Boys.

"Lazy" set the precedent for Anjali's eponymous debut. Pairing 60s orchestral pop productions with the rigidness of late 90s Hip-Hop & RnB. It seemed Lady A had found her World but she was about to take another leap star-ward. Anjali more than satisfied the leftfield beats axis of Giles Peterson, Ross Allen & Coldcut. She remixed Worldwide favourites 2 Banks Of 4, and with Spykid, Nuphonic signings Fug; but her most original & confident sounding stride would take place on the b-side of the Nebula EP. Hymn To The Sun sounded like the acid-folk of Pentangle remixed in the early 80s by Mantronik and that's not taking into account her most spine-tingling vocal to date, reminiscent of spooky folksters, Vashti Bunyan & Bonnie Dobson. The folk revival was still a couple of years off though & so it was criminally overlooked at the time of release. It set the blueprint however for Lady A.

Lady A to Z
The sampler would now take its place at the back of the studio & in its place live orchestration, real-time analogue synth washes & treated guitars as Anjali's songwriting and production skills reached new and enticing zeniths. Old friends, Bruce Brand drummer for The Masonics & Thee Headcoats & string/brass arranger Terry Edwards, Spykid & new-school blazers Black Madonnas were enlisted to make The World Of Lady A a planet of sound not heard before.

You will not hear another album this year so diverse in sound yet so fully rounded. A psychedelic pop masterpiece that is a celebration of every pop maverick from Joe Meek & Brian Wilson through to Syd Barrett & Ananda Shankar and that's just the instrumentation! Anjali's extraordinary vocals have been compared to Jane Birkin, PJ Harvey, Billie Holiday & Minnie Ripperton. Now there's not many ex-Riot Grrls you can say that about!