Richard Norris’ remix talents are truly shown to there mercurial best here, on ‘Spider’ by the other worldly Kirsty Almeida (Decca Records).

Kirsty Almeida is a midnight gardener, a connoisseur of 4 international food dishes, a lover of things that sparkle and audio glitter makes her soul giggle. Deep in the far stretches are endless possibilities and she cannot find enough time to do all the things she is curious about. She is creative full stop and cannot get enough of it. People fascinate her. Stories spiral in her imagination into song and words that are a royal feast fit for a queen. She is a descendent of pirates and half her roots are blue in blood. Music comes in waves of colour and texture and the weeks last hours in her life. Musical dresses, circular doors, chirping toy birds, sonic hallucinations: in Kirsty Almeida we’ve the return, at last, of the enigmatic true eccentric.
It’s been an artist’s life forever. Born in the UK, brought up in Gibraltar, she travelled the world as a kid (Venezuela, Singapore, Florida, the Philippines), partly because of her Gibraltarian dad’s work and partly because of the disintegration of her parent’s chaotic marriage. Kirsty’s home became music: “Music was the only place that felt like home, always.” At her many worldwide schools, 19 in all, she would pick up a guitar, play piano and work things out by ear, “harmonies were easy, hearing chords on guitars was simple”. She’d also been painting, sculpting and crafting forever. “I recently made a shaker that was made with shards of glass inside and I can see and hear diamonds falling,” she explains. “I just love sound.” She also, naturally, finds colours in chords and blends them together exactly as a painter would. “I am,” she cackles, “a massive hippy.”