One eskimO

One eskimO is an English indie and ambient music project created by Kristian Leontiou in 2004. Leontiou grows up in the north-west suburbs of London and first comes into music through his older sisters, Anna and Alex, who play in punk bands. As a child, he watches them perform at venues including The Mean Fiddler, and by his mid-teens he is already recording guest vocals for friends’ garage and dance demos.

Early career and formation

Before One eskimO, Leontiou releases his debut album Some Day Soon on Polydor, which sells over 200,000 copies, and his debut single, Story Of My Life, reaches the UK Top 10. He signs to Polydor after being introduced to Mike Sault of Warner Chappell, and the album is written and produced with Pete Wilkinson of Melodramatic Records, with Wilkinson’s wife Sarah also involved in the writing and production. Leontiou later feels that the material and image of that solo campaign do not reflect his own personality, which leads him towards a different project.

Sound, members and visual concept

One eskimO develops as a more personal, self-contained project with a sound Leontiou describes in terms of ambient, acoustic, filmic and meaningful music. He also imagines an animated visual world to accompany the songs, built around childlike storytelling and a sense of innocence. The project’s early sound is developed in a Battersea studio with Craigie Dodds, and the track Chocolate becomes an early key song for the project.

The live band forms around Leontiou with Adam Falkner on drums, Martin Waugh on guitar, and Jamie Sefton on bass and horns. The group uses animal characters in its visual identity, with Falkner becoming the giraffe, Waugh the penguin and Sefton the monkey. In 2007, Waugh is replaced by Pete Rinaldi on guitar.

Recording and collaborators

Rollo Armstrong hears the demo for Astronauts and agrees to co-produce the album with Leontiou. One eskimO records live with Ark, the studio collective associated with Rollo, Marky Bates and Grippa, with Phil Brown engineering. The band then continues experimenting with sounds and textures in Rollo’s Ark studios for a further year.

Visual partners and releases

Leontiou works with Nathan Erasmus and Phil Menni at Gravy Media, whose illustration and animation work helps shape the project’s visual presentation. Their work appears in the first One eskimO video and alongside the single Hometime. The project is built around the idea of combining music with animated storytelling rather than presenting Leontiou as a conventional solo pop act.