Princess Chelsea. Photo: Supplied
Auckland musician Princess Chelsea talks about her Taite Music Prize win, recording at Abbey Road Studios and how the band got in trouble there with a helium balloon.
The Taite Music Prize was awarded this week to Auckland musician and producer Chelsea Nikkel, aka Princess Chelsea, for her album Everything Is Going To Be Alright.
She has been extensively touring Europe - and is currently on holiday in New York so was not at Tuesday's ceremony to collect her award, but Music 101 interviewed her from there.
Winning the award was a wonderful surprise, Chelsea said.
"I'm so happy about it. I guess I've shied away from the awards side of things traditionally - I'm not sure why.
"I really was genuinely surprised to win. It did really shock me. Not because I don't think I deserve it, but the line-up - particularly this year - may have been the strongest yet. So I wasn't expecting to win."
The flood of congratulations and positive feedback that had come along with the win had been somewhat of a revelation.
Princess Chelsea's band accepting the award in her absence Photo: Dave Simpson / Supplied
"The thing I love the most is actually how happy everybody else is about it.
"I've seen all these beautiful things people have written and things people are saying, and it's just so heartwarming to see how happy all these other musicians and other people are for the album to have won, and I think that's the best part about it."
After the hurly burly of putting the album together and the promotion cycle was over she said she had not fully registered "that people were listening to it" and engaging with it so strongly.
"There's still some intrinsic elements that are very much me, and they carry through all the albums and the music, they're just presented in a slightly different way.
"When you compare it to the first album - Lil' Golden Book - it is totally different in many ways, but there also are some similarities. It's still drawing heavily from baroque classical music and very much melody focused and arrangement focused," she said.
"But it's presented probably a bit less polished and not over thinking it the older I get, which is good.
"Yeah - I love the album and I think it's probably my best one, and I'm just happy that other people like it."
She's setting up for a US tour later this year and also planning to release recordings she and the band did at Abbey Road Studios in London.
"We went in there on our European tour last year and we recorded 11 songs live in a day, which was an absolutely mammoth effort - I can't even tell you, I could barely stand afterward.
"And we filmed it as well, we had a big crew of cameras and we got 400 helium balloons in there and I think we got in trouble because one of them escaped and ended up in the vent at the top."
Chelsea said the recordings and footage should start to be released this year, and she's excited about what they laid down.
"We'd just finished touring - it's really great because you know when a band tours and plays every night you're going to see a band at their peak, and that's what this was about was like celebrating the live show."
She also hopes they will tour the album through New Zealand before heading off to the US.
