More Than A Woman: Winona

Winona: A virtual woman without a past fronting a band with an infinite future and one that have just released ‘Rosebud’, an album of glacial electro pop. Mysterious? Not really, the reality is that Winona is the combined imagination and vision of Craig Armstrong and Grammy nominated composer, player and programmer Scott Fraser; their sound complemented by the delicate vocals of Lucy Pullin and the spoken word interludes of French actress Laurence Ashley and as Craig explained to Gigwise, the premise behind the project was extremely simple and self serving.

“Scott and I decided to make some music for fun rather than for an actual project. We both like old synthesisers, vintage synths and stuff and we just said lets get together and make some music. It was actually Lucy who said I think you need to let people hear this. We actually had no intention of letting people hear it; it was literally just done for a laugh really.”

Craig continues to explain his hesitance at releasing the album: “I was a bit reluctant to release it, because if you meet up with a friend and make some music you don’t really imagine it coming out. We didn’t even record it particularly well because it wasn’t actually meant for release as such and that was one of the problems we had when we were mixing it because it was recorded in such a slap-dash way.”

Having established how Winona came about, the question has yet to be asked, who exactly is Winona? “We felt that because the basis of the project is Scott and I, obviously we didn’t really have a front person so we just made someone up.” Says Craig “We called Tom Hingston, an amazing graphic artist to design a front person for the band and she was called Winona and that’s her on the cover, we just thought we’d have a virtual front person.”

Line up and material complete, the experience of releasing an album that was initially never intended for mass consumption was an anxious one, but one that appears to have paid off: “I’m just glad people have reacted well to the Winona thing because sometimes if you like something yourself, it doesn’t mean it translates into the public.” Says Craig “I think the fact that Winona is off the cuff struck a nerve with some people; I mean it’s not really that serious.”

In Craig’s words, Winona might not be “that serious” but playing live was inevitable as he goes on to explain: “For Scott and I, Winona was initially a studio project, but Lucy and Laurence were very keen to do some gigs. The music is very filmic and I think what we’d like to do at some point is get someone to make movies for each track, so going to a Winona gig would be like going to the movies in a way. But at the moment we can’t afford to do that so that’s a bit of a pipedream.”