Amiel Muki Daemion (also known as just Amiel) was born on 13 August 1979, in New York City, and was introduced to the world of entertainment at the age of eleven, performing the leading role alongside Russell Crowe in the feature film 'The Silver Brumby'. Her music career began in 1995 when she was hired to do some backing vocals on a song that the Australian producer Josh Abrahams was producing, but instead of just singing the song, she included her harmonies, melodies and lyrics and sang only two takes for Abrahams before he offered her a career in music. They released their first single together called 'Addicted To Bass' in 1998, which peaked in the top twenty on the Australian ARIA Singles Chart, and was nominated for two ARIA Awards in 1999. With the success of 'Addicted To Bass', she was then given a solo recording contract with Festival Records in 1998, and decided that Abrahams would be the best producer for her debut album. She was confronted by delays while making the record, but refused to be bothered by the record's slow progress, using this time to write new songs both in Australia and in the United States, and 'Meet Me In The Red Room' was used on the second 'Moulin Rouge!' soundtrack with Marius De Vries, under the direction of Baz Luhrmann. The new songs Amiel worked on changed the direction of the record, and while a couple of the very early recordings remained, demos of her new material replaced much of the rest, and her album became a major priority for her record company, which had merged to become Festival Mushroom Records since she had signed with them. Due to the success of 'Addicted To Bass' in Australia and New Zealand, Abrahams and Daemion collaborated to form the band Puretone to release the song worldwide, with it becoming a number two hit in the UK, with the help of a remix by Apollo 440. Puretone's second single, 'Stuck In A Groove', was a minor hit around the world, and they also wrote the music for a Vodafone television commercial. Amiel released her next solo single in March 2003, with 'Lovesong' becoming one of the most played songs on Australian radio, and it was her first solo top ten single in Australia. Her debut album, 'Audio Out', was released in Australia on 18 August 2003, debuting in the top twenty on the Australian ARIA Albums Chart, and she was nominated for five ARIA Awards in 2003.
During the promotion of 'Audio Out' in 2004 in London, she went in search of a new producer, and came across Stephen Lironi, an ex-member of the UK band Altered Images. After a few short months of working with Lironi, she felt that her second solo album, 'These Ties', was ready, but just as the album's first single, 'Round And Round', was released, it was announced that the recording assets of the Festival Mushroom group had been acquired by Warner Music, and while staff and artists at Festival Mushroom Records started being dropped all around her, she made the agreement to postpone the release of 'These Ties' until the dust had settled. In the end the album was only released in Japan in 2005, and it failed to equal the top twenty success that 'Audio Out' had received. She passed the time in 2005 by performing the lead vocals on The Blips song 'Green Eyed World', which was featured on the soundtrack of the 2005 film 'Hating Alison Ashley', and releasing an electroclash cover of the Split Enz song 'One Step Ahead' on the Finn Brothers tribute album, until eventually the dust did settle on the Warners takeover. However, the Australian release date for 'These Ties' had to be pushed back many times, and eventually Amiel and Warner Music both agreed that it was no longer her new album, and to try to come back where they had left off halfway through the project would be impossible, so the album was put on hold while she worked on an "in between" project, which was to take the 'These Ties' track 'Be Your Girl', and form it into an EP of remixed songs from the album. She collaborated with some of Australia and New Zealand's best hip hop and dance producers, and the 'Bass Kleph' version of the song was released to Australian radio to promote the EP. This was the final nail in the coffin for 'These Ties', and with only a couple of thousand copies being sold in Japan, it is now extremely hard to locate, and so to save you the trouble, here it is for you to hear.
Track listing
01 Expectations
02 Be Your Girl
03 Moving On
04 Round And Round
05 On The Outside
06 Under Your Spell
07 These Ties
08 Trouble
09 Storm Blew Over
10 Stars
11 Following The Sun
12 Easier To Lie
