ACCLAIMED WELSH SINGER - SONGWRITER ABIGAIL HOPKINS  RELEASES RIVETING SECOND ALBUM 'BLUE SATIN ALLEY'
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Atmospheric And Evocative Work, Mixing Jazz, Folk And Art-Pop Has Been Compared To '60s Underground Music Icon Nico, Punk Priestess Patti Smith And Experimentalist Legend Kate Bush

Acclaimed Welsh singer-songwriter Abigail Hopkins has returned with her second album Blue Satin Alley.  With this new collection of atmospheric, probing and evocative songs, she continues to earn accolades and comparisons to artists spanning generations, including 1960s baroque underground icon Nico, ironic punk high priestess Patti Smith, British legend Kate Bush and other poet-vocalists that include Lydia Lunch and Los Angeles' own Exene of X.

"Music is one of our most powerful art forms," she says. "It resonates with everybody, really and impacts us in so many different ways. It's incredibly healing, consoling, and motivating as well.  And it's the way I can express myself."

Born in London into a theatrical family, her father is legendary stage and screen actor Anthony Hopkins. Abigail's first passion was music, learning classical guitar before her teens, also fostering a genuine love of poetry and the way music and words could work in synergy to create something so unique.  Though music remained in her heart, she decided to follow the family muse and explored acting, appearing in films that included the heralded "Shadowlands" as well as "Remains of The Day,”  "A Few Selected Exits" and various theater roles as well.

Abigail returned to musical explorations this decade, releasing her first album, Smile Road on her own label, Possessed Records , in 2002.  Billboard spotlighted the release as an "Intriguingly alternative-jazz discovery," while London's The Times called it  "a striking mix of smoky jazz, strings and gentle beats."

Following a talked-about appearance at the South By Southwest music festival in 2004 and L.A.'s historic Whisky-A-Go-Go in 2005, Abigail took a stylistic shift for Blue Satin Alley .  Working with musician-producers, John Winfield and Keith Osborne, the collaborative project was recorded, mixed and mastered in a remarkable 12 days.

"I'm very blessed, and incredibly lucky to have found quite by chance two producers who have always become my co-composers," Abigail says.  "They don't write lyrics but have big musical input and some songs were spontaneously writen in the studio. John's incredibly fast and doesn't mess about.

A mix of observational storytelling and character studies set to subtle rhythms and textured instrumentation - carried by a voice that whispers, shouts and narrates -  Blue Satin Alley, is rich with timeless yearnings and bittersweet melancholy.  Abigail sees herself as both a realist and a romantic as slivers of light shine through the dark. "A lot of the my song's aren't personal, they come out of my imagination, they're just about strange characters."

The far-ranging moods and settings range from the opening 'Butterfly," which evokes medieval balladry meeting jagged guitar to the stunning a capella "I'll Be Waiting For You By the Bus Stand," which has already impacted AC Radio in the USA'   the ghostly, cello-accented "Hailstones," the melodramatic framing of "Ghost Solider," the literal pots-and-pan percussion of the more humorous "Harold's Bees," and the late night reflections of the title track.

"I very much like to experiment with music, so I'm a bit hard to categorize," Abigail says. "The first album was quite jazzy and now I'm moving more towards a folk-art moment; I like to push the envelope with musical boundaries. I love recording, that's the best part of it all for me."

Abigail has long been bi-continental, shuttling between London and Los Angeles.  The contrasts in landscape and culture have also touched her writing. "Staying in L.A., driving around a lot, it's more rugged, the mountains bigger, with a Mediterranean climate, while England is more green, with rolling hills and certainly different weather," she laughs.

Abigail is lining up select special shows, “Performing live music is different, of course, and I think you just have to be quite dynamic and it's a very different feeling from acting in a theater play – it's just you up there with a microphone and band, singing your own material.”

Abigail is up for the challenge, in fact excited over new opportunities.  "I've always loved coming to America," Abigail says.  "Now I want to step that up. I'd like to go to Nashville and New York, too. With music, I want to give people pleasure yet also give them something to think about at the same."