surrounded by music from the age she was, it was only natural that claudia (or claude, as she stated at 5 she wanted to be called due to claudia being too girly) found it in just about anything she touched. there was only so much cutlery percussion her parents could stand before they bought her a violin for her sixth birthday. not really ones to follow tradition and get her lessons, they gave it to her with a cd of handel's sonatas played on violin and let her do whatever she wanted to do with it.
it was magic, to be honest. she was adept to it right away, often playing her violin like it was a guitar (something she would go on to do in reverse when she started to make her own music), and found joy in nothing else. she picked up the guitar the following year. the piano came after that, drawn to the synthetic sound of new order and fascinated by the fact something so similar could sound so incredibly different.
at 15, she bought her very first fender. the one she still uses to this day. joining various bands along the way as a lead or rhythm guitarist (occasionally subbing to the sleater-kinney way of no bass being no sacrifice if you had your guitar tuned right). at 17, she realised she liked women as much as she liked guitars and went to study classical music and music theory in glasgow, returning to london two years later with a black head of hair in the style of pj harvey.
it wasn't until her early-mid 20's she started to make her own music. the band she was with at the time disbanded and she fell into the ever-growing list of unemployed youth in the uk. while trying for the jobs she could, jamming equally as much, she decided not to let the time go to waste and started to build her own studio in her parents attic. she'd never sung a note before in her life until being inspired by a woman that could play like hendrix and sing at the very same time, at which point she decided to carve and mold herself into anything she wanted to be.
it worked somehow. at an accidental open mic in 2009, a producer approached her afterwards, told her he liked her "james dean swagger" and gave her the opportunity to sign a small record deal. difficult as it was for claude to put her feelings into words, she found it even harder to put words to her files of layered mp3s but managed after seeing dali's christ of st john of the cross for the first time in years. believing art and dreams to be the soul's innermost unconscious desires, she used it to get started on her first record.
5 years later, she's just released her sophomore album and is embarking on her biggest european tour yet. personal life? it's in the works, but she doesn't let it bother her much. one of the perks of being a rock star is the groupies, right?
