Santogold praises Bjork

Long-awaited debut album released

12 May 2008 - Santogold has released her long-awaited debut album today (12 May) and she says she owes a lot to Bjork.

The self –titled record has been described as a mixture of electronic, dub and indie-rock and she says the Icelandic singer gave her a couple of slots on her tour recently and helped get her career right on track.

Santi White

The woman behind Santogold, Santi White from Philadelphia, told 6 Music: “I did three shows – I did a show in Montreal, a show in New York and a show in Atlanta with her and I just loved it.

“Just an amazing experience. She’s another artist who is so inspiring and I’m just so excited that she even took interest in what I was doing really early on.

“She heard some stuff on MySpace and was really, really supportive.”

MIA

Santi also spoke about working with other artists, including MIA, who she has actually been compared to: “She’s great, I mean I think that the best thing about working with her is that we’re actually friends and so it doesn’t really feel like work.

"She heard some stuff on MySpace and was really, really supportive"
Santogold

“It’s like girl time. Y’know when you’re just travelling all the time, when you’re working all the time you don’t get to hang out with your friends that much so when we work together it was just like hanging out with your friends.”

She went on about her respect for MIA: “We did one song together. It’s gonna be a b-side – but we weren’t even together. She did it when she was in the UK and I was in New York.

“It’s also nice to have other friends and specifically female friends who are artists and who are doing things that I think are really creative and interesting – and who are also sort of breaking the rules.”

Mark Ronson

Santi mentioned someone else she wants to work with - Mark Ronson: “Mark and I have been planning on working together for a really long time but both of our schedules have been insane.

“I did manage to do something with him for his record – the song Pretty Green – which was a cover of The Jam and it was just really fun, like sing-song version.

“And I did some touring with him supporting that.”

Santogold play the Ones to Watch night at Old Blue Last in London tonight (12 May).



Kelly Stooke