Exactly one year to the day of the original concert – Marc Almond and Chris Braide’s ‘Chaos And All The Hits – Live At The Royal Festival Hall’ is released exclusively through Spotify! Stream it here:
One of the most gifted vocal talents the UK has ever produced, Marc Almond has enjoyed an acclaimed and enduring career as an artist selling over 35 million records worldwide, both with his solo work, and with the pioneering synth-pop duo Soft Cell.
Chris Braide is a Grammy nominated, Ivor Novello and ASCAP award winning songwriter, producer, composer and musician who has worked with the likes of Sia, Hans Zimmer, Lana Del Ray, Beyonce and Nicki Minaj.
One of the most recent highlights of Marc Almond’s illustrious and celebrated live career was the comprehensive celebration of his song-writing partnership with super producer Chris Braide in their hit studded joint concert at the iconic Royal Festival Hall. The unique performance was on the 10th February, 2020, just prior to the start of the ‘great lockdown’. It was the first time that the stellar songwriting partnership had performed live together since their collaboration began with the 2015 Marc Almond album. ‘The Velvet Trail’.
This concert recording, ‘Chaos And All The Hits’, saw Marc Almond perform a selection of his catalogue of hits plus new material from his latest collaborative album with Chris Braide, 2020’s ‘Chaos And A Dancing Star’.
Their special guest star for the evening was Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, his signature flute adding, “a prog-rock frosting to ‘Bedsitter’ and ‘Tainted Love’, not at all to their detriment. For his part, Almond sings the 1970 Jethro Tull song ‘The Witch’s Promise’, quite the strange-in-a-good-way moment of the whole show”, as said reviewer Caroline Sullivan in the Guardian, adding, “Singing of Italian horror films (‘Giallo’) and Hollywood cemeteries (‘Hollywood Forever’), Almond is on magnificently melodramatic form.”
This mammoth 37 song set includes some of Chris Braide’s best known compositions – ‘Unstoppable’ (Sia) and ‘Kill And Run’ (for the film ‘The Great Gatsby’), an emotive stripped back piano and voice suite of cult songs from Marc Almond’s own songbook – including ‘Black Heart’, ‘Torch’ and ‘Where The Heart Is’ as well as paying tribute to Marc Almond and Chris Braide’s unifying love of Marc Bolan in deft cover versions of ‘Children Of The Revolution’ and ‘Change’ . ‘Chaos And All The Hits – Live At The Royal Festival Hall’ is released exclusively through the Spotify streaming service on Wednesday 10th February, 2022 – one year to the day of the original concert!