Sian Evans is a Welsh singer and songwriter from Caerphilly, in south Wales. She is best known as the front woman of Kosheen, the Bristol-based group with which she first finds major success.

Early life

Evans comes from a musical family. Her mother is a singer, and her grandfather is a composer who conducts male voice choirs. She begins singing at an early age and, by her teenage years, performs with jazz and R&B bands. Her early influences include Joni Mitchell, Welsh folk music and hip-hop, and she develops an early interest in drum and bass through Roughneck Ting parties.

She leaves home at 16 and moves to Cardiff, where she lives in squats and friends’ houses while working several jobs and travelling to parties and festivals. In 1991, during the rave era, she gives birth to her son. For several years she splits her time between environmental protests, including Newbury, and working at summer festivals. In 1996 she lives in a tepee on a traveller’s site in the Brechfa Forest, where she writes songs at night. Many of these songs later become part of Kosheen’s debut album, Resist, before she moves back to Bristol to find collaborators.

Kosheen

Kosheen forms in 1998. The group is based in Bristol and, in its early years, comprises Evans with Darren Decoder and Markee Substance. Their sound combines rock, hip-hop, jazz, drum and bass and folk, and the band is associated with trip hop, electronic music, drum and bass and progressive house.

The debut single “Hide U” becomes a breakthrough club track in 2001 and reaches number 6 in the UK singles chart. It wins Best Single at the UK Drum & Bass Awards, Best Remix at the Muzik Dance Awards and Record of the Year at the Dancestar USA Awards in Miami. Other charting singles from the album include “Catch”, which reaches number 15, and “Hungry”, which reaches number 13. Resist reaches number 8 in the UK album chart and also enters the top 30 in Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium and Greece. It sells half a million copies worldwide and is later described as platinum-selling. The album leads to extensive touring, including 141 shows in 33 countries, and performances to large crowds in Europe, Australia, South Africa and Asia. The band also plays to a 20,000-strong crowd in Serbia in summer 2001, becoming the first international band to do so since the conflict in the Balkans.

Kosheen’s second album, Kokopelli, includes “All in My Head”, which enters the chart at number 7. After the album goes gold in the UK, the band leaves BMG during the Sony BMG merger and signs to Universal Germany. Its third album, Damage, follows after two years in the studio and includes “Guilty” and “Overkill”. Kosheen’s fourth album, Independence, is released in 2012, and its fifth, Solitude, follows in 2013. Both are issued on Kosheen Recordings.

Solo work and collaborations

While continuing with Kosheen, Evans also works as a featured vocalist and collaborates with a range of producers and artists. She works on a side project with Simon Kingman under the name Melopark, sometimes billed as Sian Evans & Simon Kingman. The project develops after a reunion gig in aid of the tsunami disaster, with the pair beginning to play together in winter 2006 and developing the material in 2007. They perform in Moscow and at Glastonbury in 2008.

In 2011, Evans features on DJ Fresh’s single “Louder”, which is used in a Lucozade Lite campaign in the UK and Ireland. The song reaches number one in several UK charts, including the singles, download, dance, indie and Scottish charts, and also reaches number four in Ireland. Evans also writes “Hot Right Now” for Rita Ora. She appears on several tracks on Roger Shah’s album Openminded, including a new version of “Hide U” and the original tracks “In The Light” and “Shine”.

Her other collaborators include Dino Psaras, Dr. Meaker, Jolyon Petch, Jody Wisternoff, Brains, Martin Eyerer, Chicane, Paul Hazendonk, Bent, EZ Rollers and Bench.

Later solo project

Evans later teams up with her long-term writing partner Ron McElroy on a solo project built around songs arranged in a simple voice-and-guitar format. Their partnership spans almost two decades, and a one-off show in St Petersburg in late 2013 brings the project into focus. The response leads them to form a band to support the songs on a larger stage.

Their UK debut sells out Camden Jazz Café, and bookings follow for Glastonbury, Boomtown and Sunrise Festivals. They also perform in Salzburg and sell out the Roof Music Festival in St Petersburg with the full band. The project has a soulful sound with elements of jazz, folk and blues, and Evans records it without electronics.