Sonically, the album warps through punk-rock aesthetics, hip-hop montage, rock 'n' roll power and inflections of jazz free-spiritedness. - Kate Magoc PGH City Paper

This product was made by a HUMAN.

“You just gotta love a woman who says “If I were a man I’d kick your ass, but for now I’ll kill you with words,” in the dry manner that singer/poetess

Sonically, the album warps through punk-rock aesthetics, hip-hop montage, rock 'n' roll power and inflections of jazz free-spiritedness. - Kate Magoc PGH City Paper

This product was made by a HUMAN.

“You just gotta love a woman who says “If I were a man I’d kick your ass, but for now I’ll kill you with words,” in the dry manner that singer/poetess Christiane D does...”-
Christiane D (Leach) is an award-winning artist and is best known as a distinctive face and voice of the Pittsburgh art scene. In 2010, she received an August Wilson Center Fellowship in support of her first solo recording which features over twenty Pittsburgh-based musicians and producers. In 2007, along with her feminine peers, she was honored at the New Hazlett Theatre's gala, Celebrating Women in the Arts. In 2003, she received a Pennsylvania Council for the Arts Fellowship for World/Jazz/Blues musical composition, and in 2002 received a Pittsburgh magazine’s “40 under 40” award.

As a poet, artist, writer, and musician, she has made building bridges between disciplines a major focus in her art. She is described by many as a passionately intense, husky voiced sensual presence, which will turn your head and more than likely inspire you to shout, shake, rattle and heal.

In Obliquity of the Ecliptic (OOTE), Christiane D has produced her first solo album. This collection of songs reaches into the very fabric of human experience; struggling to survive, falling from grace, or rising to the heavens. Astronomically speaking, OOTE is the pull on the planet towards the light of the sun or the darkness of space, the reason for the seasons. The earth’s axis is tilting from high and warm to low and cold, immutable and shifting the cycle of days. Various theories state the earth’s axis is not fixed and immutable for all times. Recent natural disasters have disrupted the earth’s rotation and caused its spin to accelerate. Indonesian earthquake/tsunami - 2.68 microseconds. Sumatran earthquake – 6.8 microseconds. Chilean earthquake – 1.26 microseconds. Japanese earthquake – 1.8 microseconds.

She became fascinated with the circular wobble and cyclical motion of the earth’s ecliptic and how it mirrored her own shifts and spoke to her need to realign, balance during her own personal disasters. OOTE is a collection of intimate songs that pinpoint the balance, imbalance, breakups and breakdowns of the human condition. Marking each of these disasters are poetic satellite interludes signaling emotional shifts, tracing the influence of astral changes, connecting the stories.

An enigmatic musical raconteur “... whose lyrics tell unconventional stories in traditional prose or poetic ways; more extreme than the folk ballads of Johnny Cash or Bob Dylan. Leach’s stories are like movies, with scenes set and emotions conveyed through the eyes of the characters…”
Intimate and human, Christiane D uses her prodigious storytelling skills to narrate human catastrophes: a drug addicted boyfriend; self hate in the mirror; finding the strength despite the disasters; creating inner peace from the stars and space above.

Drawing on the traditions of African-American styles of Jazz, Blues, Funk and Hip-Hop, Christiane D fuses these influences with Rock, Punk, Classical/Opera, world/ethnic music and early Electronica into a multi-genre blend. She has evolved the practices of improvisational jazz to encompass the beats of these diverse genres, creating a layered and unique sound.

Her earliest musical influences came from her parent’s collection of classical and world music. John Coltrane, Weather Report, Willie Colon, Beethoven, Sarah Vaughn, and Flora Purim, are a few of the artists that provided a round the clock soundtrack for her childhood. Using that early exposure, she and her sister built their own music collection of rebellion that spanned Punk, Heavy Metal and Hip Hop: a “vermischung” (blending) of Black Flag, Judas Priest, Grace Jones, Gang of Four, Kraftwerk, Au Pair, Black Sabbath, Parliament and Public Enemy.

Christiane D, solo and reinventing herself, decided to tap into the expansive community of remarkable musicians in Pittsburgh who would be skillfully receptive to experimentation. OOTE features an impressive roster of over twenty musicians and producers whose genres span from jazz to heavy metal. She brought them together for the fist time to create music with only a rough draft to work from. The recordings capture the power of improvisation and magic of spontaneity.

“OOTE speaks timelessly, with a spiritual backbone and genre-bending sound (Leach neologically deems her genre "esque"), but also alludes to our current world with hints of gender politics and class struggle. Sonically, the album warps through punk-rock aesthetics, hip-hop montage, rock 'n' roll power and inflections of jazz free-spiritedness.” - Kate Magoc, Pittsburgh City Paper

Christiane D...An artist making music...a poet singing songs... a musician doing films...a songwriter spinning text... a visionary on an art journey

Releases Soma Mestizo: Albums: Ergo, Life of a toy, Peepshow, Interim I & II, Silversun ep (Natural Resources records), Nasty Boy, and Telomere.

3 Generations Walking: Songs: Skin, Moments in Love, Glory, Mohawk, and Feed

Indigenous Resistance: Songs: Eagle Screaming Red Sky Alight, Tattoo, and Ivere...the land.

Songwriting: Phat Man Dee: Christiane D’s songs featured on her two releases, Life just Goes On and Torch of Blue.

OOTE features: Guitars: Craig Izzy Arlet and John Purse

Bass: Ketan Bakrania, John mutherfuckin Hall, TFunk, John Purse and Paul Thompson

Drums: Ken Foley, Paul Quattrone, Richard Gartner, Chris Belin.

Piano/Keys: Eubela Bey, Paul Cunningham and John Purse.

MCs: Dane Cosby and Jack Wilson.

Additional vocals: Brian Cummings, Olivia Payne, John Purse, Stevee Wellons (Tambourine).

Additional beat programming: Paul Quattrone and Eric Yeschke.

Production by Oyo Ellis, Beau Demonte and Noel Hefele and Herman Soy Sos Pearl. Samples featured from Sugar Pie Desanto's "Git Back" and Herbie Hancock's "I Have a Dream".

Satellite Soundscapes (Monotron, samples and keyboard) created by yours truly, Christiane D.

This product was made by a HUMAN.