Biography
“quirky home-made pop”
Most high schools have an extremely uncool girl who wanders around singing in a high-pitched voice and writing terribly insightful poetry, trying to get people to recognise her as the amazing and talented singer/songwriter she really is deep down inside (underneath the purple cross-colour jeans and tie-dyed tshirt). LeighStarDust was, and still remembers being, that girl.
LeighStarDust was created in 1997 when, two years after starting piano lessons, Aliese Millington tried to emulate her heroine Tori Amos. The results included earplugs for the Millington family and a number of ditties with titles such as Introduction and Umbrella, containing such groundbreaking lyrics as, for example, there’s peanut butter on my fruitcake. Such honesty. Peanut butter. On one’s fruitcake. The horror.
After performing these songs at school concerts and in her bedroom for almost a year, Aliese got up the courage to approach Matt Reiner of stunning and sadly now defunct Adelaide band The Sunday Roast. Matt had been organising gigs to give emerging artists experience in performance. These shows were known as ‘Whisper’ gigs and Aliese, having taken the stage name LeighStarDust, played two Whisper gigs to packed audiences of her friends and most importantly her Mum, who liked all LeighStarDust’s songs except the one about the baby being drowned.
All tired out from playing the Whisper gigs LeighStarDust lay dormant for some time. During 1999/2000, however, she resurfaced with a guitarist in tow. Through research for an honours degree in Ethnomusicology LeighStarDust met Pete Clarke, a guitarist originally from N.S.W. At roughly the same time that LeighStarDust met Pete, a group of new friends invited LeighStarDust to play a gig that they were organising. LeighStarDust accepted and invited Pete to accompany her on guitar, and so began a two-week practice schedule that enabled LeighStarDust to see her songs in ways that she never had before, namely, as Lego blocks. It sounds odd but holds quite true in nearly all cases that a LeighStarDust song is made up of several different coloured Lego blocks, and that’s why ages 0-1000 can and do enjoy LeighStarDust’s music, but should do so with supervision up until the age of at least three. Held at hip Adelaide venue Supermild, the gig gave LeighStarDust the confidence and justification to push her work to new limits.
After this gig, LeighStarDust, in both its solo (LeighStarDust and Casper the Keyboard) and duo (LeighStarDust and Pete) incarnations went on to play groovy Adelaide venues The Crown and Sceptre, The (sadly now defunct!) SwingCat Club, The Rhino Room, The Governor Hindmarsh, The Jade Monkey, The Prince Albert and The Grace Emily, more corporate venues such as the Adelaide Town Hall, The Seaford Hotel, and, most excitingly, Old Parliament House. LeighStarDust has also been honoured to play with many fantastic local (Adelaide), interstate and international bands and solo performers, including Sarah Masters, Trip Up From Mission Viejo, The Career Girls, Cookie Baker, Parlour, 5NYTK!, Rachel Cooper (Vic.), Wagons (Vic.), Home For the Def and Lederhosen Lucil (Can.). And the list keeps growing!
At the end of 2000 Pete began working with a new band that required more commitment than he could give while keeping up his work with LeighStarDust, so with best wishes and many thanks LeighStarDust released him from his position as acoustic guitarist extraordinaire. He is well remembered by LeighStarDust fans for his cheeky grin and beanie, and LeighStarDust herself will never forget the day that Pete kept complaining a kid in the next car was looking at him and when LeighStarDust turned to look at the kid realised that Pete had a huge men’s handkerchief shoved up both of his nostrils. An interesting and entertaining man indeed.
2001 kicked off with an ongoing and bane-of-existence-type PhD candidature in Ethnomusicology for LeighStarDust (or is that Aliese, things were starting to get blurry), and an extremely successful all-covers gig (the infamous ‘Dead Man’s Pants’) that saw LeighStarDust join forces with the fabulous Sarah Masters, and the giggling duo found themselves being booked all over Adelaide. This was probably partly because of a live-to-air performance given by LeighStarDust and Sarah and recorded and played to death on air by the kind people at 3D radio’s (93.7fm) Top 20 +1, and partly because they were just so damn cute. A LeighStarDust creation, She Started Throwing Things, was featured in this recording and subsequently included on a compilation CD that was put together by 3D radio and titled Depth Charge. LeighStarDust really felt the benefits of inclusion on this CD with requests for her work coming through from community radio stations all over Australia. Up till this point, LeighStarDust did not have had any examples of her work to hand to her salivating fans. Fortunately, this recording helped her to meet ‘the Produsa’. As his website truthfully expounds: “Sometimes people need a little help. Sometimes people need a lot of help. And sometimes people find that help. That help is… The Producer.”
The fabulous Nigel Koop saw LeighStarDust through an intense three months of recording and hair-pulling, involving some of Adelaide’s finest musicians and all-round good guys, such as drummer Simon Parker, previously of phenomenal (and sadly now defunct) Adelaide bands Parlour and the Miltons; technologist extraordinaire Mykl Bray, who was known around town as one of the best DJ’s ever to spin a disc and as one third of the captivating (and now defunct, what the hell’s going on?) Canino, later becoming an important part of the excellent (and now, of course, defunct, like there’s a curse) Melbourne band Snap! Crakk!, and many other performers who ‘just happened to be hanging around’ tha produsa’s house. Such is the talent of tha produsa and the pulling power of LeighStarDust. This cumulated in the launch of LeighStarDust’s debut EP, ManlyDetectives (with amazing artwork and support from Brian Degger), at the Crown and Sceptre Hotel on the 28th of Feb, 2002, featuring special guests Brillig and Canino. With Manly Detectives receiving high rotation on the fabulous 3D radio (two weeks at no. 1 on the Top 20 +1), 2002 was BUSY.
LeighStarDust’s involvement with tha produsa also gained her songs entry to the prestigious Adelaide Blank Tapescompilations (2003 and 2004), and her admiration of tha produsa led her to contribute a track on the 2002 tribute to Nigel Koop, Booya! It also led her, throughout 2003, to be involved with the seminal 3D show known as Monday Drive. Hosts Michelle and Steven gave LeighStarDust a weekly verbal workout, making her their roving fashion reporter. These segments were heard far and wide, and many many people were known to tune in and find out whether it was possible for LeighStarDust to get through the segment on even less homework than she’d done the week before. There was an excellent Monday Drive website attached to the show, and LeighStarDust was very very good at updating her Fashion section. Not. Let’s hope she’s better at it with this website.
During 2003/2004 LeighStarDust was part of fantastic all-girl band, Hello Minnesota!, which featured Helene Koen on bass/guitar/vocals and Sarah Masters on drums/vocals and played many fantastic gigs, including a support spot for Brassy (U.S.A.), a spot on the local stage at the 2004 Big Day Out and a feature spot (including interview) on Channel 7 afternoon show, Girl TV. Pretty like buttons and ferocious like tigers, the group were known for their appealing and bop-worthy combination of drums, bass, keyboard and three-layered vocal harmonies, and also for being serial dresser-upperers, giving much consternation to Star Wars fans who suddenly found themselves wondering whether they should be falling in love with the three very feminine looking Darth Vadar’s on stage or yelling something about resistance to the dark side. Hello Minnesota! is on hiatus at this time, but have very secretive and un-Sith-like plots burbling away in the background of 2005.
Hello Minnesota’s cease of live performance in late 2004 encouraged LeighStarDust to work on her solo act again, and since then she has decided to aim for World Domination, knowing full well that this is what every band aims for, but she really means it. The starting points included guest work with her favourite Adelaide band, Brillig (collaborating on the 3D radio favourite – a cover of David Bowie’sFashion), and recording a version of local superstar Matt’s Little Brother’s song Flowers for a tribute compilation titled A Bunch Of Flowers. Other tributes that LeighStarDust has been involved in during the last couple of years have been to perform three of local great Baterz’s songs in support of TheBedridden’s live CD launch at the Grace Emily, and to ‘interpret’ three Smiths/Morrissey songs for a cover night that featured the irrepressible (believe me, we’ve tried) Space Horse.
In 2003 LeighStarDust took out the Best Solo Female award in the inaugural dB Magazine Readers’ Awards. Much to her surprise db’s readers voted her in as Best Solo Female again in 2004. Many thanks to those who nominated and voted!
2005 began with LeighStarDust releasing a second EP, titled They Make Good Pets (But I Don’t Have One), recorded by Denni Meredith and featuring clever and comic (literally!) artwork by Simon Gray). The EP also featuring a ‘drunken chorus’ of wonderful people, including Peter Brat, Holly-Priscilla, Megan Long, Racquel Kulerski, Hannah Leane, Ellie Martin, Ianto ‘Benevolent In The Netherlands’ Ware, J Harkness and Renee Melders. This EP was launched impressively and extensively at the Jade Monkey on the 21st January 2005 with special guests The Zero Kelvins and Belittle League, and LeighStarDust was an extremely lucky lady to have not one but TWO accomplished backing groups for the night, one being The Melodious and Incredible Zero Kelvins(also known as The Zero Kelvins) and the other being a right Adelaide super-group, a gumbo, if you will, of Adelaide’s leading musical lights. This included Shelley (formerly of now defunct Parlour and Reading For Pleasure) on cello, Bek (of Uberstomp) on drums, Leni (of Hello Minnesota! and known for her solo efforts as Franki) on bass, Ianto (of now defunct Hardy Coxon and known for solo work as Ianto Ware), Pippa (of the October Manifesto) on backing vocals and Ellie (of the October Manifesto and Billy and Lanor) also on backing vocals.
LeighStarDust was also honoured during this time to meet Adelaide icon, Wilsy (news reader and local celebrity Anne Wills), and be interviewed with Wilsy about their shared love of earrings on ABC Adelaide (891am).
Recently, LeighStarDust has been working with an excellent team (Dan Murphy, Dale Zampogna and Bec Freezer) in creating her very first video clip for the songThey Make Good Pets (But I Don’t Have One). She’s also had this wonderful website designed for her by fantastically stubborn mule and beautiful lady Michelle Koen.
LeighStarDust’s sound started out as a girl-and-Casio-keyboard attempt to emulate the goddess-and-Bosendorfer example given by Tori Amos. It has become an eclectic mix, sometimes involving friends with cellos, guitars, drums, giggles and more, but always boils back down to a girl with a tinky keyboard who draws influences from riot grrl and electro-clash (see Lederhosen Lucil, Le Tigre, Chicks on Speed, Bjork) while paying homage to her teenage interest in sweet acoustic ballads (see Liz Phair, Frente, Lisa Germano). And who really loves Spoon. From Austin. Don’t be fooled, however. That tinky keyboard has been known to make incredibly phat beats and amazingly distinctive sounds, and that girl has been honing her vocal abilities for nearly a decade. The talents of keyboard and girl are given ample space in the songs written by LeighStarDust. She never knows what she’s doing, but no one ever seems to guess that she’s anything but the world’s next Bacharach.
Look out for LeighStarDust during 2005 cause she doesn’t want to get run over as she gigs all over the place and records like a mad thing in the basement of the home that she shares with Brillig, lovingly dubbed The Marilyn Mansion. Get on board and become a fan now, and LeighStarDust will remember you fondly when her World Domination is complete.
