Melbourne based singer-songwriter and music producer Naomi Braun is an extraordinary young woman with an outstanding ear for music and world-class songwriting abilities.
A milkshake of soul, dub, hip-hop, electro and spoken word, her new album 'Through The Devils Wood' is a collection of 11 beat-driven pop songs, that have a strong cinematic appeal in their production values. People often liken Naomi’s vocal abilities to that of Erykah Badu, Little Dragon, Portishead, M.I.A or Santogold and the album has production styles akin to that of Massive Attack.
Acting as the dynamite director behind her new independent full-length album, Naomi has been hard at work producing the album in her home studio in Melbourne and collaborating with various filmmakers and well-known musicians.
Naomi has collaborated with Sly and Robbie; Jamaican reggae music extrodinaires who have worked with No Doubt, Grace Jones, Madonna and the Fugees to name just a few. Soo taken by her music after discovering her online, Sly and Robbie contacted Naomi through Myspace and provided her with some beats that were later developed in to the song, Through the Devils Wood, inspiring the album title.
Another artist of note, Lotek (music producer from North London), helped co-produce a few songs with Naomi and mixed the album. Lotek produces a mash up of hip-hop, reggae influenced grime and UK dancehall and has collaborated on the recent 'Hilltop Hoods' platinum-selling album from 2011. A cornerstone of Big Dada and Ninja Tunes, Lotek is the production maestro behind Speech Debelle’s 2009 Mercury Prize winning album Speech Therapy and Roots Manuva’s Run Come Save Me.
And to throw another talent in to the mix, long time friend and artist from NYC, Johanny Paulino aka Gabriel, raps on the song 'Live in Lies.'
The album title Through The Devils Wood is a metaphor for the epic span of 8 years that Naomi spent writing and producing the album whilst going through a number of transformative life changes. The 8 year 'passage of initiation’ into the 'real', world involved living through tears, love, the death of her Mother, starting a clothing boutique to subsidise her music career, paying rent, break ups, traveling the world, meeting new friends and working on other collaborative musical projects that later became the ground work for the album. Out of the 35 plus songs Naomi wrote, only 11 made the final cut. 
Extrodinarily, being formally untrained in music, Naomi wrote orchestral arrangements and piano parts in some of the songs e.g. 'Live in Lies', which have technically baffled her trained counterparts!
Naomi has independently funded this debut release, as she likes being the director of all decisions and thrives off the creative control and input she has over the album. As she and has a strong affinity with filmmaking she therefore focuses the majority of her performances around generating video clips and giving herself a strong online presence featuring behind the scenes of the music making and music video production processes, referring to this approach as the 'New School' way of doing things as a recording artist. "People love live shows and I'd like to do more of them, but online fans can reach you from France and enter your 'world' at the tap of their iPod. They can see you in little clips being creative, and doing stuff and instantly be a part of your online world. It also inspires other artists to make and do their own work and not rely so much on the traditional channels, says Naomi.
Two music clips are due in June and August respectively; produced by independent Melbourne based film making team 'Who By Fire'. Inspired by Bjork's approach to her music career, Naomi likes to do filmic performances that ironically have no appeal to fashion, but delve more into fantasy. In the clip, she is dressed in robes and dusted in white clay, appearing more like a creature from a fairy story. Her passion for this level of fantasy and mystery can be seen in the album cover, seen naked and painted black, lying on an animal skin.
In 2010, a musical side project called Fox and Braun sees Naomi dressed as a 60's sex kitten twin, collaborating with fellow BFF and independent singer songwriter Ivy Fox, singing 60's inspired rock and roll and making their own video clips and hilarious online behind the scenes content. Strong fashion-based 60's outfits styled by Naomi herself, has the girls looking like Tarantino movie stars.
Naomi started writing music after finishing her Fine Arts degree at Wimbledon College of Art in London, when her exploration of sound-based art installations took a more musical turn and she started teaching herself how to produce music on a computer in 2002. Back then Bjork and Erykah Badu were big inspirations. In 2003, Naomi was part of the band Deep Face who were nominated for an Aria.
In 2004 her release 'Scargrounds' won her a triple J next crop artist title, with outstanding reviews of her unreleased song 'flow right' by Missy Higgins, The Good Doctor and Nicole Cheek of Triple J.
Naomi has put together a band that will be doing a launch in Melbourne at THE TOFF in town on JULY 26th at 8.30pm; the line up being drums, guitar bass and keys.
Stay tuned for a cinematic, musical, beat-driven experience.