Meet the proud progger with serious folk-rock heritage and a fiercely independent streak.

Words: Ian Fortnam

Abandon all preconceptions, for Rose Kemp’s singularly passionate muse bears no resemblance whatsoever to the folk-infused traditionalism practised by her parents Steeleye Span’s Maddy Prior and Rick Kemp. Though retaining the socio-political urgency of folk’s lyrics and inheriting her mother’s spine-tinglingly powerful vocal clarity, Rose combines drone dynamics with rock crescendos to stunning effect.

Her latest solo album Unholy Majesty, produced and mixed by Foo Fighters/Biffy Clyro sonic architect Chris Sheldon, combines enigmatic lyrics (“It’s important to me that people take their own experience and project it onto the basic canvas of what I’ve written”) with hypnotic repetition (the influence of Black Sabbath and drone artists like Earth and Om). Climactic closer The Unholy, an ever-evolving beast of a composition that – in its studio incarnation – stretches toward ten minutes, encapsulates Rose Kemp’s singular talent perfectly. Its denuded solo fragility gradually metamorphosing toward an extended band coda that simply will not let up, it’ll leave you emotionally exhausted.

In her early teens Rose sang, toured and wrote with her parents in a number of projects (including Steeleye Span). It was a natural consequence of growing up on the road rather than a concerted effort by her folks to recruit her into the family business.

“I certainly wasn’t taken to stage school and made to dress up in red sequins and dance,” says Rose of her ‘showbiz’ upbringing. “Sometimes I’d be in the studio with my dad and he’d say, ‘Do you think we should have the snare louder?’ That kind of thing. It was just natural. I wasn’t dragged to festivals, ceilidhs and barn dances every five minutes. I don’t suppose they even noticed my ambitions at first they were always busy getting on with their own careers. One day I just said, ‘I wanna be a songwriter’ and they said, ‘That’s very nice, dear’. And that’s what I did.”

Once Bristol-based Rose finally entered the music business, she didn’t much like what she saw: “Money, and the lack of it, is killing music. The wonderful music business of which my parents spoke to me as a child is sadly gone. I hoped to be earning enough money to work in a studio where I could actually reach the potential of my talent and have the chance to have a string section and do all the things that are in my head, but those times are gone. People are writing crap just to get signed. It does upset me, as it upsets anyone who lives through music and lives for music.”

On a self-righteous roll, Rose sets her sights on post-X Factor plasticity. “People that have worked with me in the past have said, ‘Unless you’ve got an image that already works, fits a template that we know has a success rate, we can’t work with you’. And that doesn’t wash with me. The people that I work with accept that I’m gonna do whatever the hell I wanna damn do. A lot people want success more than they want to make a difference to the history of music, but that’s never gonna be the way I work.”

PURPLE ROSE

The one key ingredient of her music that gives Rose Kemp “joy every day” is prog.
And her first step on the progressive path?
“Burn by Deep Purple. Others like Gong, Tangerine Dream, Can, Henry Cow, Crimson, Goblin, Van Der Graaf came later, but Deep Purple started it all. I’ve got everything they’ve ever made, a whole section of my vinyl is Purple, but I’d have to say Burn. Given they’ve done some wonderful, wonderful work, that’s the one that started it all for me.”