The Magic Theatre - Sophia Churney, Dan Popplewell (PPR Publicity)
As any fan of the Streets will tell you, a grand don’t come for free. A hundred grand, on the other hand, does. At least it does if you’re Dan Popplewell, a man who has just achieved the seemingly impossible by making an album of lush orchestral pop, with a full orchestra and choir — the kind they simply don’t make any more, because nobody in today’s straitened music industry can afford the £100,000-plus recording costs — for precisely nothing.
The extraordinary story of Popplewell and the singer Sophia Churney, their band, the Magic Theatre, and their debut album, London Town, began back in 2003, when both were members of Ooberman. The band had received plenty of acclaim (the DJs John Peel and Mark Radcliffe,