The Mummers @ The Komedia - 20th September 2007
Published 5th Sep 2007 by Chris

Brighton-based band The Mummers bring chilling and beautiful Bjork-esque pop to Komedia on Thursday 20 September. Led by Raissa Khan-Panni’s (or just Raissa, as most know her) soaring vocals, the band create extraordinarily huge orchestral sounds set amongst digital beats and chilled out summer synth.

Raissa, a clear-eyed, silver-tongued, independent musical force with two solo albums under her belt describes her voice as an adventure - you're not sure what's going to happen next! One listen to her second solo album Believer, and you’ll hear why. Raissa dares to be eclectic: stretching and warping her music from string-laden atmospherics to sing-along pop, via faraway nursery rhyming and swoony dramas.

One thing is for sure - the tunes are immediate and

memorable, the music textural and unusual. Figures of comparison would include Björk, The Cocteau Twins, Portishead and Joni Mitchell - but really, her sound is one of a kind.

Raissa grew up in seventies and eighties South London; her determinedly international outlook arose from her mixed roots - a mixture of Chinese, Indian, Mexican and Russian. Her parents would take her and her brother out of school to go traveling; at twelve she trekked the length of India, six years later she'd covered the whole of Europe and America. She draws on this for her musical imagery; and her experiences abroad filter into her music, which is too spirited and strange to be purely British. It was this imagery that led Brett Anderson from Suede to request for her to support the band, brought Cypress Hill to remix her, and saw Raissa appear on TFI Friday, T4, Big Breakfast and VH1 amongst others.

The Mummers came into being in 2006 in Brighton. After months fine-tuning their sound and working to bring their sound to a live setting, they released their first single in July 2007 – the enchanting Two Survivors.

THE MUMMERS visit Komedia on Thursday 20 September at 8.30pm. Tickets are £7 in adv. available on-line at www.komedia.co.uk/brighton or from the Box Office on 01273 647100 (booking fees apply).

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