Alex Lee facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Alex Lee
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Alex Lee performing with Placebo for a televised performance in 2007
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Alex Lee |
| Born | 16 March 1970 Bristol, England |
| Genres | Alternative rock, electronica |
| Occupation(s) | Musician |
| Instruments | Guitar, keyboards, bass guitar, piano, mandolin, harmonica, glockenspiel, musical saw, vocals |
| Associated acts | Goldfrapp, Florence And The Machine, Suede, Placebo, Massive Attack, Strangelove, Lupine Howl, The Blue Aeroplanes |
Alex Lee (born 16 March 1970 in Bristol, England) is an English musician. He has played guitar and keyboards for Goldfrapp, Massive Attack, Suede, Placebo, Strangelove and The Blue Aeroplanes amongst others. He has also worked as musical director with Florence And The Machine, Marina & The Diamonds and for the Royal Shakespeare Company as well as composing regularly for film and television.
Biography
Lee joined The Blue Aeroplanes in 1989, around the time that they signed to Ensign Records and played on the 1990 album Swagger. He left them in 1991 during the making of the follow up album Beatsongs and formed Strangelove with Patrick Duff. Strangelove signed to Food Records and recorded three albums Time For The Rest Of Your Life, Love & Other Demons and Strangelove. They had Top Forty hits with Beautiful Alone and The Greatest Show On Earth before disbanding in 1998.
During his time with Suede, he was a live session player on the 1999 Head Music tour and in 2001 was taken on as a full member of the band, helping with the writing and recording of their fifth album, 2002's A New Morning.
In January 2006, Lee was recruited for Placebo's live line-up and played with them on their Meds world tour which finished in September 2007. He played guitar and keyboards on the album Live At La Cigale.
He contributed guitar to five tracks on Seventh Tree by Goldfrapp (2008), three tracks on 2010 album Head First and five tracks to Tales Of Us in 2013. He played guitar in all the Goldfrapp live shows to promote Seventh Tree in 2008 and was in the 2013/14 line-up for the Tales Of Us tour.
In 2010, he played in the live premiere of a specially commissioned soundtrack for Carl Theodor Dreyer's classic 1928 film The Passion of Joan of Arc. The score was composed by Adrian Utley of Portishead and Will Gregory of Goldfrapp and was accompanied by a live performance of the new piece by an eclectic group of musicians including Lee as one of six electric guitarists alongside members of the Monteverdi Choir, harp, percussion, horns and keyboards. Lee worked for The Royal Shakespeare Company as musical director and guitarist in the play Dunsinane, a modern-day sequel to Shakespeare's Macbeth written by David Greig. Its first run was at Hampstead Theatre, London in February/March 2010 and then went to Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Glasgow Citizen's Theatre and The Swan at Stratford-Upon-Avon in May and June 2011.
In November 2011, he joined Marina & The Diamonds live band as guitarist and musical director to promote her second album Electra Heart which reached number 1 in the UK Albums Chart in May 2012.
He has worked on numerous soundtracks as a composer for TV and films, including the score for Channel 4's ground-breaking documentary series Alone in the Wild in September 2009. And with co-composer Nick Powell, Alex Lee has written the music for both series of the BBC Three drama Lip Service which was first aired on Oct 12th 2010. The pair also contributed original music to Hawking, a film about the life of scientist Stephen Hawking directed by Stephen Finnigan released in September 2013.
In 2015, Lee worked with Florence And The Machine as musical director (although he did not play onstage with the band) for the live shows and promotion campaign to accompany their third album How Big How Blue How Beautiful which reached number 1 in both the US and the UK. He also performed the same role on the 2018 album campaign for High As Hope.
In October 2017, the duo composed the score for Tony Award-winning video artists 59 Productions to help create a 20-minute animated public artwork entitled Reflections which celebrated 20 years of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Using a technique called projection mapping on Frank Gehry's iconic building, the large-scale show was created to enable the public to live out a unique sensory experience that traced two decades of history and creativity in Bilbao that was seen by an estimated 200,000 people over four evenings.
In 2019 he played guitar live with Massive Attack on the Mezzanine XX1 tour in Europe and the US.
