Christina Carter - Biography
The music of Christina Carter is hard to fully classify. Of course this sense of wonder and mystery holds much of its charm. As elements of folk, droning minimalism, noise rock and dusty ambient music shine through her idiosyncratic sound, taken together these influences are synthesized into something truly unique. As one half of the core duo of Charalambides, along with her ex-husband guitarist Tom Carter, she has built an impressive body of progressive noise rock and free-form folk music. Her solo career is just as impressive and prolific, with two decade’s worth of music that centers around her otherworldly voice.
Charalambides was formed in Houston, TX in 1991. The group quickly went on to become one of the most inventive and original noise bands of the ‘90s with an original mix of folk, blues and gritty minimalism. From self-released cassettes to vinyl releases on the legendary Siltbreeze label, Charalambides harnessed a sincere and heavy emotional intensity with skeletal song forms that expanded into psychedelic improvisations. It was a music best heard live as the Carters, along with various partners, squeezed ever ounce of sonic power out of the present moment.
By the late ‘90s the duo had started their own label, Wholly Other, as an outlet for side projects, friends’ bands and solo work. Christina’s first solo effort, Living Contact, was released in a limited edition in 2001. The album collects early, stripped down songs featuring an acoustic guitar and her voice recorded during Charalambides off time from the mid to late ‘90s. The music sounds like the work of Charalambides made bare, a naked take on that band’s spectral songs that showcases Christina’s haunting vocal dexterity.
Over the next four years Carter would release at least twelve records on Wholly Other and likeminded labels such as Eclipse, Time-Lag and Ecstatic Yod including collaborations with Gown and avant-blues guitarist Loren Connors. These albums capture Carter’s various explorations of extended song form and abstract vocalization. While all are stunning, many have become very hard to find.
In 2004 the Chicago based Kranky label reissued Living Contact. This spawned a relationship that continues to mark some of Carter’s major releases. In ’06 she released the gorgeous Electrice on Kranky. All of the songs are presented in the same key, using the same unique guitar tuning. Over four lengthy songs she explores a minimalist song cycle that is breathtaking in its emotive simplicity. Crystalline guitar patterns snake and repeat, overlap and twist into new forms while that alien voice glides above. Electrice arguably remains Carter’s most distilled take on her unique aesthetic.
Strangely Carter lent her vocals to a track on DJ Shadow’s 2006 album The Outsider. This undoubtedly marks the widest audience the singer has had and the track is an interesting context in which to hear her strange and beautiful voice.
For the next two years Carter continued working with now ex-husband Tom Carter in Charalambides as well as continuing her remarkably prolific release schedule including a split with Pocahaunted on the No Fun label and another collaboration with Gowns. During this time most of her solo work was released on her own Many Breaths label and sees Carter continuing to develop her abstract songwriting and spectral singing.
In 2008, Carter returned to Kranky for her next proper solo release. Original Darkness features ten songs of stark emotion, from despair and pain to moments of tenderness, this is a dark, lonely record made for long nights. Her singing and guitar playing are quietly fleshed out by minimal bells and keyboard arrangements. While the song structures mark this album as possibly her most traditional, the music still inhabits a liminal dream world, as if Carter were whispering obtuse truths from across a vast void.
In recent years Christina Carter continues to release her frequent work on CD-R, mainly on Many Breaths. She also performs regularly solo and with Charalambides. Her music stands out in the worlds of free-folk, psychedelic noise and abstract rock as a truly original sound. Her sense of space, song structure and that captivatingly strange voice define her records and mark her as one of the most unique songwriters in underground music.