KEEPINTOUCH
BIOGRAPHY
Astrophysicist by day and musician by night; Catherine Allin is a singer-songwriter, and independent recording artist, based in London (UK). Her compositions are an eclectic blend of electronica-indie-folk. Sounds like Jeff Buckley came back to life, joined Radiohead, and then had a sex change. Her debut single "Ambush" was is out now on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, Deezer (and the other usual suspects) and she is currently working on an E.P. for release in 2019.
Having made a name for herself on the live scene playing such events as the Fringe Festival, Brighton Live and in some of Brighton’s finest venues, Catherine is now breaking onto the London live scene. With expert command of a loop pedal, she adds colour and intensity to her enchanting songs; her emotive voice sometimes softly delivering the melody, sometimes soaring over layers of driving guitar to build epic soundscapes.
Catherine grew up listening obsessively to classics such as The Police, The Eurythmics and Paul Simon. Residing in the countryside where there’s not much to do beyond trespassing on stinky mushroom farms, breaking into derelict buildings, and climbing trees, it was not long before Catherine turned her hand to creating music for herself, defeating boredom forever!
From the moment of picking up the guitar Catherine learnt through experimentation rather than drawing directly from existing work, and as a result has developed an entirely individual style; stumbling across bizarre chords, which lead her to onto harmonic lyrical melodies and her own unique style.
“Really awesome style, whether she's being loop-a-licious or strumming the ukulele it's always mesmerising.” Fourth World Promotions
“Beautiful original music... awesome loop pedal work.” London Unplugged
“Beautiful and hugely talented… we predict big things for this very gifted young lady” Brighton Calling
SCIENTIST&PROMOTER
As well as writing and performing music I busy myself with various other activities: gig promotion, LGBTQ+ artist promotion and astrophysics (which is what buys me Marmite and other such essentials).
Queer & Unsigned
Set up in 2017 by Catherine Allin and Sally McFerren, Q&U provides a platform for the rising stars of the LGBTQ+ soceity to promote themselves and network. We run the acoustic stage at the UK's largest lesbian festival LFest2018 and a very popular event featuring the very best queer-female musicians on the scene at SHE Soho in London. We will be starting a mixed night imminently, click here for more info.
Astrophysics
I work as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Imperial College London. My work contributes to our quest to understand the very first stars and galaxies, and their successors. Prior to the birth of the first stars, the gas in the Universe was entirely neutral, that is electrons were bound to atoms - a bit like the planets are bound to orbit their stars.
As soon as stars formed they produced large amounts of very high-energy radiation. This radiation expelled electrons out of their atomic "solar systems" and ionised the gas in the Universe. A process often referred to as reionisation.
The "normal" matter in our Universe (i.e. matter than is not dark matter) is predominantly Hydrogen. Luckily for us there is a very weak signal that neutral Hydrogen produces, called the 21-cm line. If we can map this signal at different points in the Universe's history, we can essentially watch reionisation happen.
We are now developing huge radio telescopes, that span continents, to detect this signal. I research the statistics of the 21-cm signal, this will help us able to develop a better understanding of the physical processes that shaped the nature of our Universe. Click here if you are interested in finding out more.