Artist Biography

She'd been a vinyl junkie from the age of ten, searching second hand stalls and picking up all kinds of records from the likes of The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Velvet Underground and Bob Marley and later on to Punk classics such as the Sex Pistols, The Buzzcocks, Blondie and the Clash.
This music provided the soundtrack to a life less ordinary!

Living on the road in an old Bedford ambulance with her black and white rabbit LD50, kept Leila close to another great passion, the countryside of England and Wales and to conservation work with the Wildlife Trust. At the same time it took her to many festivals and the birth of outdoor underground parties, where she felt a powerful evolution taking place.

In astrological circles, the age of twenty eight is said to hail the start of a transformative time, when Saturn returns to the position it was at birth, triggering major life changing events. For Leila this came complete with a celestial intervention during a trip to India, when a total solar eclipse accompanied by full on psychedelic trance party, fell slap bang on her twenty eighth birthday.

Goa beckoned, and life was never quite the same again…

On her return from that dance-floor epiphany in the Rajasthani desert, Leila began to seek out this new sound, to spin records she had heard on her own Technics decks. She wanted to explore the depth of sound she'd discovered while getting deep down and dirty in the Indian dust.

A love for the free party scene and UK gigs kept Leila busy but her desire to play further afield took her first to Mexico, to the awesome pyramids of Palenque. Then came a great opportunity to play for Dragonfly before she jetted to Zambia for the Solipse festival. Whilst there, an invite to gig in Brasil took Leila to Sao Paulo, Rio De Janeiro, inland to Pireanapolis and out to the beautiful beaches of Bahia. It is easy to understand her appetite for just one more psychedelic party as she played at Freakadelic in Sao Paulo, hours before her flight back to London!

Leila has played at festivals across Europe including twice at Samothraki. Her tunes are plucked from a spectrum of psychedelia, never too progressive or minimalist. She doesn't come in banging but seduces with her insistent grooves, funky basslines and multilayered melodies, often harbouring a hard-edged, springloaded bite. She may be a waif but this little lady sure packs a punch.

Dina Cohen, 2005