Brisa Roché
Paris
Born in 1978, Brisa Roché was raised without electricity on the northwest US coast, where she surfed the waves made by an artist
mother and adventurer father, before leaving home with her guitar at 16 to spend the glory days of Grunge
in Seattle. There she traded her acoustic for an electric and began roughening up her voice of young Joni
Mitchell, inspired by the release of PJ Harvey's "Dry".
The death of her father inspired Brisa to turn towards the masculine night-life world of jazz. She moved
to Paris and plunged into role of bandleader and frontwoman, improvising 5 nights
a week in the stone "caves" of St. Germain, cutting her teeth and learning to command the stage, putting the vulnerability of her own songwriting temporarily aside, in favor of the vocal
freedom possible through jazz. However, discovered by Blue Note and signed to EMI in
2004, Brisa released a critically acclaimed first record that veered instead towards spacey, cinematic pop.
With "The Chase", she was ready once again to confront songwriting.
Her second album, "TAKES" came out on Discograph, psyche-pop with layers of dreamy Californian
vocals and an accessible folk element, including collaborations with Nick Zinner of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
After a 60 date tour, Brisa decided to produce on her own, went into hiding with her band and came out with
an astonishingly compact third album recorded by Henry Hirsch (Lenny Kravitz, Madonna, Mick Jagger..), hard heavy vocals with Blondie-esque hooks, a band-sound bordering
on garage... "ALL RIGHT NOW".
Brisa's most recent album release, entitled "Morning Noon and Night" (THE LIGHTNIN 3) revealed a "girls' group" combining the vocal talents of Rosemary Standley(Moriarty), Ndidi O, and Brisa Roché, and fun-based early-soul arrangements by Toby Dammit (current drummer for Iggy Pop), with renowned King Khan on bass.
Her new record, « BRISA ROCHÉ/SECOND DATE » is scheduled for release the summer of 2013, an idiepop-electronica collaboration with British artist Second Date.
Brisa Roché’s visual art has appeared on all three albums and at gallery show "happenings" where live
music/performance narrates the pieces on display, ranging from large, brutally painted portraiture to
graphic black and white drawings.
She was recently chosen as muse for the crystal company Swarovski, and as such has been active in
mutually inspired creation between the collection "Rock Royalty" and her own vision as painter, composer,
and égerie.
Brisa Roché as actress (as well as her original music) appeared in the film "After" by Geraldine Maillet, and she will appear in Michel Gondry's "L'Écume des Jours". She is preparing for a role in Jean-Philippe Martin’s feature film « De là où tu es, tu peux m'entendre”, and her voice highlights the film "Une Pure Affaire".