Guy Sigsworth
Sigsworth in 2007
Background information
Birth name	Allan Arthur Guy Sigsworth
Born	May 1960 (age 63) Ilkley, England
Occupation(s)	Record producer songwriter musician
Instrument(s)	Keyboards harpsichord clavichord guitar
Labels	Mercury KX Decca Universal Classics
Member of	Frou Frou
Formerly of	Acacia
Website	guysigsworth.co.uk

Allan Arthur Guy Sigsworth (born May 1960) is an English record producer and songwriter. During his career, he has worked with many artists, including Seal, Björk, Goldie, Madonna, Britney Spears, Kate Havnevik, Imogen Heap, Bebel Gilberto, Mozez, David Sylvian, Alanis Morissette, Eric Whitacre, Alison Moyet, and AURORA . He has also collaborated with many celebrated instrumental musicians, including Talvin Singh, Jon Hassell, and Lester Bowie. He is a member of the duo Frou Frou, with Imogen Heap.^[1]

Early life

Allan Arthur Guy Sigsworth was born in May 1960^[2] and grew up in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, where he developed a youthful passion for early music,^[3] especially the 14th-century composer Guillaume de Machaut. His earliest musical heroes were the multi-instrumentalist David Munrow and the maverick field recordist and composer David Fanshawe. He was a pupil at Leeds Grammar School in the 1970s. He studied the harpsichord, first at summer schools at the Casa de Mateus in Portugal, and later for a year at the Utrechts Conservatorium in the Netherlands. He toured Europe playing harpsichord for the European Union Baroque Orchestra.

Sigsworth has worked with various engineers and programmers of distinction. During the late 1990s, he worked with Damian Taylor, who has since engineered, programmed, and performed live with Björk; in the early 2000s, he worked with Sean McGhee, who has since produced Temposhark; and most recently, he has worked extensively with Andy Page, who has previously worked with Sasha, BT, and Harry Gregson-Williams.

Career

Frou Frou

One night in Mumbai, India, where he was producing a song for British artist Amar, Sigsworth composed a tune on his Yamaha QY20 pocket sequencer. As soon as he arrived back in London, he took it to Imogen Heap, and asked her to write a top line for it. It became "Flicks", their first song for what would become the Frou Frou album Details. Originally, there was no plan for Sigsworth and Heap to form a band. It was simply a matter of Sigsworth wanting to hear various song ideas properly realized. As Heap said: "Every month or so, Guy would phone me up and say 'I've got a new song, would you come in and sing it?', and then before we knew it, we'd already started the album."

As a linking concept for the emerging set of songs, Sigsworth suggested two ideas for the lyrics:

1. They should feel like one half of a conversation rather than singer-on-a-soapbox declarations. Sigsworth's inspiration for this was the 1932 Jean Cocteau play La voix humaine (the entire text of the play consists of one side of a telephone conversation between a woman and her former lover. Her lover's words are never heard but are inferred from her words).
2. The word "love" should be used as often as possible.

Sigsworth wrote the lyrics to the songs "Breathe In", "Only Got One", and "The Dumbing Down of Love", and co-wrote the lyrics to "Let Go", "It's Good to Be in Love", and "Psychobabble" on Details. Heap wrote the remaining lyrics, apart from "Maddening Shroud", which was texted by Alexander Nilere.

After eleven songs had been completed, Heap and Sigsworth set about finding a name for their collaborative effort. Sigsworth, a fan of all things French, came up with "Frou Frou", which Heap loved. The name comes from Rimbaud's 1870 poem "Ma Bohème", and is a French onomatopoeic word originally meaning the swishing noise made by skirts on dancing women. The album title, "Details", was a reference to the way the songs were constructed in the studio, by layering momentary details of sounds and performances to create a web of sound.

The album was released in 2002 on Universal Records.^[1] It was critically acclaimed, but did not achieve mass sales. "Breathe In" was released as the first single internationally, and reached number two on the Italian radio airplay charts, but follow-up singles "Must Be Dreaming" and "It's Good to Be in Love" were never commercially released in the UK. A video was also made for "The Dumbing Down of Love", directed by Joel Peissig (who later directed Heap's solo video "Hide and Seek"). After touring the record extensively across the United States, where the duo had established a cult fan base, Frou Frou disbanded in 2003.

Heap and Sigsworth temporarily reformed Frou Frou to record a cover version of "Holding Out for a Hero", originally recorded by Bonnie Tyler, for the Shrek 2 soundtrack. The duo were approached by the music director of the film, who had been a fan of their album. The resulting track is played during the end credits of the film. Frou Frou also experienced a resurgence in popularity in 2004, when Scrubs star Zach Braff chose album track "Let Go" for his independent film Garden State. Other Frou Frou tracks have been included on television series, such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Roswell High.

Discography

References

External links

• Official website
• Guy Sigsworth discography at Discogs