Mia Doi Todd
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Mia Doi Todd (born June 30 1975) is a musician from Los Angeles, California, U.S..
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History
Todd moved to New Haven, Connecticut in 1993 to attend Yale University, where she majored in East Asian Studies. Her first album, the ewe and the eye, was recorded at the Spaceshed, the recording studio/garage belonging to the LA band Further. It came out on their label, Xmas Records, in the spring of 1997, as she was graduating from college. She moved to New York City and started playing in clubs. Elliott Smith and the Palace Brothers were big influences of hers at the time. That fall, she recorded her second album, come out of your mine, which was released on The Communion Label in 1999.
She lived in Japan for most of 1998, studying Ankoku Butoh first with Kazuo and Yoshito Ohno and at Asbestos-kan, and then with Min Tanaka at Body Weather Farm. She speaks rudimentary Japanese. Returning home to Los Angeles, she recorded most of her next album, zeroone, on a Power Mac G4 and started City Zen Records to release it in 2001.
Her first three albums were solo acoustic recordings. After these, she started to play with a band. They had been called Los Cincos and were renamed Syncopation. They never recorded much together, though. She signed a contract with Sony/Columbia Records, and recorded The Golden State, culling songs from her previous albums. Mitchell Froom and Yves Beauvais helped her produce it. She recorded at the Sunset Sound Factory, and the album came out in the fall of 2002 and was generally well received by critics. For a year, she toured the US and Europe, on her own and then with Alaska! and Lou Barlow's Folk Implosion. Sony chose at this time not to renew her contract.
Her fifth album, Manzanita, released in 2005, is also the Spanish name of a round-leaved bush with smooth, red bark and tiny, bell-shaped blossoms, that grows throughout California and the Pacific Coast. She recorded up in Lake Hollywood with Rob Campanella. Many of the songs are still just voice and guitar or piano. Brent Rademaker played bass as well as some guitar and piano. On drums and percussion were Hunter Crowley, Ric Menck, and Nelson Bragg. Members of Dead Meadow and Beachwood Sparks made cameo appearances, and the entire band Future Pigeon backed her on the song "Casa Nova". Rob engineered all the while, and played electric guitar, piano, dulcimer and mandolin.
An album of remixes, La Ninja: Amor and other dreams of Manzanita, appeared in April, 2006. The disc also had three new tracks, including a cover of the Beatles' song "Norwegian Wood."
Collaborations
Mia has collaborated with many rock/electronica/hip-hop musicians, contributing her unique voice to the tunes of Dntel, Beachwood Sparks, Nobody, Adventure Time, Frausdots, Folk Implosion, The Mission, Saul Williams, Prefuse 73, Flying Lotus, and more.
Discography
Albums
- the ewe and the eye (1997)
- come out of your mine (1999)
- zeroone (2001)
- The Golden State (2002)
- Manzanita (2005)
- La Ninja: Amor and other dreams of Manzanita (2006)
- Gea (2007)
EPs
- Pink Sun EP (2006)
