Wednesday, September 18, 2013

ESCORT FALL TOUR

We are very excited to announce our Fall Tour with our good friends from Chicago, JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound. Hope to see you there!

Thu Nov 14 – REX Theatre Pittsburgh, PA
Fri Nov 15 - The Magic Bag Ferndale, MI
Sat Nov 16 - TBA
Sun Nov 17 - Triple Rock Social Club Minneapolis, MN
Mon Nov 18 - The Majestic Theatre Madison, WI
Wed Nov 20 - TLA Philadelphia, PA
Thu Nov 21 - Brighton Music Hall Boston, MA
Fri Nov 22 - Black Cat DC Washington, DC
Sat Nov 23 - The Bell House Brooklyn, NY

Sunday, September 1, 2013

"Barbarians" in Rolling Stone's favorite songs of the moment!

Bowery Ballroom 8/17/2013

photography by wagz2it

The Bowery show was to me, our best New York show so far. Everything seemed to be lined up in order for a great show. Thank you New York, the best crowd every. There's nothing like a hometime coming show!
And it was completely sold out!

I wore: a Nichole Miller print dress, a Zulu hat from Crowns of Nyanga and a pair of high green pumps (lost the right shoe during my slap solo, but nobody knows that)

Interview for the Wearhouse Disctrict

The 17 piece disco band, Escort, played an amazing, energetic show at the Bowery Ballroom in Manhattan on Saturday August 17th with opening band, Midnight Magic.

Both bands brought the audience a blend of classic disco and funk with new age electronic dance elements and vocals, and the crowd loved it. Everyone was on their feet, dancing, having a great time. The energy in the audience was unbeatable. I think after experiencing Escort live it's safe to say disco never died, it was just revamped.

Front woman of Escort, Adeline Michele - in a Nicole Miller print dress and hat by Crowns of Nyanga (styled by Irini Arakas), oozed sex appeal and glamour like the vocal and fashion icon she is. Michele, born and raised in Paris, France, grew up in a very large and musically talented family. She has been singing and touring professionally since she was 5 years old, when she joined a choir in Paris. Michele is also a working model and was able incorporate her modeling talent in her stage presence at the Bowery Ballroom by using the poses, confidence and style that you would see on the pages of Vogue.

I was able to interview Michele, earlier in the week to talk about her excitement for the Bowery Ballroom show, the origin of Escort, upcoming shows and so much more.

DP: First, tell me a little about Escort.Who founded it? How did you get involved?

AM: Escort was originally founded by Eugene Cho and Dan Balis, who met each other in college. While spinning disco records together, they came up with the concept for Escort. At that time, I had just put out my first album and one of my friends told me that Dan and Eugene were looking for a vocalist and thought I'd be perfect for the spot.

So, you grew up in Paris. Why did you decide to move to New York?

Let's see… I've lived in New York full time for about seven years now. After high school I decided to take the next step and move to New York, where I'd be able to take music seriously. I tried college for a few days, but I honestly just found it… boring. I like to live in the now, and at that time I had the choice of either staying bored in college or living an exciting life in New York doing what I love.

Do you play any instruments?

I do. I play the bass, and actually last year I started playing the bass in Escort. I don't play it the whole set, but we often play musical chairs with our instruments. Since it can sometimes be hard to travel with all seventeen pieces, and so many members of Escort are multi-talented, we do switch it up a bit. We have a very solid sound, but we are always growing and learning more.

With the success of Escort, do you still plan to continue modeling?

I would love to bring the two together, so that when I model, I'm modeling as Adeline Michele of Escort.

Where have been your favorite places to perform?

One of my most favorite places to perform has to be Portugal. We went there in December of last year, and they had turn down three hundred people at our show. Everyone knew so many of our lyrics and were just all so welcoming. It was perfect. And, we went there again in July. It was Eugene's birthday and they sung Happy Birthday to him in Portuguese. It was amazing.

Is Escort currently touring?

We just came back from a tour in Europe. And, next week we are heading to the west coast.

Escort's self-titled debut album is critically acclaimed and even landed a spot on both SPIN and Rolling Stone's list of the "Best Albums of 2012." They also recently released a new package for their single "Barbarians" that included remixes from CSS, Tiger & Woods and Rance Muhammitz.

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Opening for Hip Hop legends: check.

Photos: De La Soul, Escort @ Toronto’s Festival of Beer

Posted by Lauren Garbutt ⋅ July 27, 2013 ⋅ Leave a Comment

Filed Under De La Soul, Escort, Toronto, Toronto's Festival of Beer

By: Lauren Garbutt (@LaurenGarbutt1) -
Hip-hop pioneers De La Soul, who formed in 1987 in Long Island, New York, and who released their most recent album, Plug 1 & Plug 2 Present… First Serve, last April, performed a headlining set during the first night of Toronto’s Festival of Beer at Bandshell Park in Toronto with Brooklyn-based contemporary disco trio Escort, who released a remix album, Escort Remixed, which contained remixes of tracks from their 2011 self-titled debut album, last October, and who have performed with an eclectic mix of artists ranging from indie-rock titans Arcade Fire to avant-classical luminaries Alarm Will Sound.
http://aestheticmagazinetoronto.com/2013/07/27/photos-de-la-soul-escort-toronto-festival-of-beer/

De La Soul. (Photo: Lauren Garbutt/Aesthetic Magazine Toronto)

And Lisbon wins again. Plus that was one of my fav outfits EVER

They got me front...

And back...

It's hard to explain the amount of love, respect and encouragement that comes out of the Portuguese audience. Everytime we go there, I feel like it's our best show ever.
What an amazing night we had at the EDP Cool Jazz Fest. Visually striking venue, most loving crowd, and playing right after and meeting Mr Lee Fields was just the perfect combination for a great feeling of achievement.

We took the energy from Europe and brought it to Brooklyn

MUSIC HALL OF WILLIAMSBURG MAY 24 2013

Bass of in the encore

Shot by Dennis Manuel

WHAT? Refinery 29 calls me "ultra-rad?"

Adeline Michèle Has Moves, Beauty, & Sequin Animal-Print Pants

Our daily swoon was delivered this morning courtesy of The Aesthete, who graced our screens with a feature on the gorgeous and talented Adeline Michèle.

In case you haven't heard, Michèle is the 24-year-old front woman of the 17-piece disco band Escort, and it's no accident that she's the band's ringleader: This ultra-rad Parisian musician says her stage persona is as if "Prince and Chaka Khan had a kid together." Her style choices are made with that in mind — on stage, she wears clothes that she can jump around in, squat in, and really just belt it out like the all-around glamazon that she is.

Michèle is styled by her close friend, Irini Arakas, who puts Michèle in items like sequined animal-print pants. Of her personal look, Michèle insisted that she's "kind of a tomboy," at which her stylist responded with a scoff, explaining "really what she is, is French." Touché.

Check out the full article to read more about our new style crush, and let us know if you're as into her as we are. (The Aesthete)

http://www.refinery29.com/adeline-michele

Interview for Aesthete Magazine

This Girl Is On Fire

http://www.theaesthete.com/story/view.dT/this-girl-is-on-fire#image_1080

Adeline Michele heads up Escort, the 17-piece disco band ready for its close up

by Ayana Byrd photography Brooke Williams

Adeline Michèle believes in the power of collaboration. And she would have to as a member of the colossally sized, 17-piece disco band Escort, which blends electronic dance music with the exuberance of ’70s disco. Yet with all those bodies on stage, she manages to be the person that no one in the audience can stop looking at. She is the band’s lead singer, yes, but the 24-year-old also has a few other things in her arsenal: beauty, balls (of the musical performance kind), a bass that she plays in addition to singing and a style that is colorful, eclectic and just-left-of-center sophisticated. The looks and musical talent are hers alone, but the wild wardrobe looks are created with her friend and stylist, Irini Arakas.
“You thought I put this together myself?” Michèle asks, laughing, posing in a pair of sequined animal-print pants with two-foot suede fringe in the middle of Arakas’ office. The walls are pinned with press clippings and inspiration boards, and the room is filled with scarves, clothes and jewelry for Arakas’ line Prova. Michèle, who commutes to the midtown space from her Brooklyn apartment, considers it her “second home,” where she regularly comes to put together outfits that help her to get into her onstage character: “If Prince and Chaka Khan had a kid together, that’s how I am onstage.”

“If Prince and Chaka Khan had a kid together, that’s how I am onstage.”

“Let’s be honest, it’s not really a collaboration—it’s a dictatorship,” says Arakas, who admits that she is a perfectionist. A year and a half ago, she met Michèle through her college friends Eugene Cho and Dan Balis, the founders of Escort. A former Vogue staffer-turned-designer, Arakas had started to feel like clothes and fashion were more work than play—until she took on the task of styling Michèle. “Bands with a comparable number of people onstage, like Flaming Lips or Arcade Fire, they can outfit everybody,” says Arakas. “But the jubilee and spirit of Escort’s music can be channeled into the looks we put on Adeline.” Lately, she has taken to naming some of her inspirations with monikers like “Axl Rose Meets Fela Kuti.”

Michèle, who was born and raised in Paris, welcomes any flavor of jubilance, but notes that whatever she wears needs to be able to move with her. “I love putting on fancy outfits and belting out a song…that’s disco! But comfort matters, because onstage I need to be able to dance,” she explains. “And I squat a lot.” She also plays bass and jumps around—which all makes for a great performance, but presented a big challenge to Arakas, who before working with Michèle, was more familiar with dressing models who only moved on command. The outfit that changed it all for them both was a sequined piece that Arakas found at the bottom of a box in a Palm Springs vintage store for $60: “That dress was the ‘a-ha’ moment, where I got everything right. It worked for the kicking, spinning, all of it.”
Like the line from Escort’s latest single, “Barbarians,” which goes, “Stand up…stand up…bang your drums, we are the barbarians,” Michèle is a force to be reckoned with, both onstage and in real life. She insists that she’s “kind of a tomboy,” at which Arakas scoffs and explains that really what she is, is French. Michèle doesn’t argue. “I don’t hug people,” she says. “In a movie, someone dies, I don’t give a fuck. But a horse falls down and I lose it, crying hysterically.”

“I don’t hug people. In a movie, someone dies, I don’t give a fuck. But a horse falls down and I lose it, crying hysterically.”

It may also be the reason behind her general frankness, as Michèle dismisses the recent online chatter that Escort’s buzz is only growing because the helmet-clad electronic duo Daft Punk has re-introduced disco to the masses. “We’ve been doing this for six years,” she says of Escort, which has been met with critical acclaim ever since the release of its self-titled debut last year, an album that was hailed one of the 50 Best of 2012 by Rolling Stone. Fresh off of a European tour, the group hits New York this week at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg before a busy summer schedule.
Though Arakas is excited to send Michèle on the road with a trunk full of inspired looks—the Brooklyn show’s outfit is a nod to the gold chain tunic that Isaac Hayes wore at the legendary Wattstax concert—she is really looking forward to recreating an idea she’s been pondering for months: Keith Haring once covered a nude Grace Jones in white body and face paint, a red wig and metallic see-through circles on top of her lady parts. “Go ahead, mention it in the article,” she says, teasing Michèle. “It’ll be more pressure for her to do it.” Michèle looks decidedly calm about the future prospect of showing all her business onstage. After all, what’s disco if not daring?
Makeup: Mimi Kamara
Hair: Shelli Mosley

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Pitchfork digs, I can sleep tonight

Monday, May 20, 2013

BARBARIANS!!! ESCORT NEW SINGLE !!

NYC's most opulent disco outsiders return in style

Escort are back, and they're gonna fight for your right to party. New York's premier modern disco ensemble returns with new single "Barbarians," out June 25 via Escort Records, and it's a righteous blast of expertly engineered soul, funk, and, yes, disco — Daft Punk fans just getting into the stuff would do well to make Escort their next checkpoint. "Stand up, stand up / Bang your drum," lead vocal chameleon Adeline Michèle belts, and the 17-piece band snaps right to attention. They already know she wants more cowbell, so she doesn't have to ask.
Escort will hit the road for a handful of U.S. and international dates this summer. "Barbarians" marks their first release since last year's Escort Remixed, and their first all-new material since their SPIN Essential debut.

http://www.spin.com/articles/escort-barbarians-stream-tour-dates/

Back on the Europe stages..

Back from a super fun tour in Europe this May. Every single night was special. I hold the Paris show very close to my heart though... Performing in front of my whole family for the first time in 4 years was incredible. They are so supportive and I was so proud to introduce them to Escort