Imre Poniklo


Imre Poniklo is a musician, best known as the lead singer, songwriter, lyricist and guitarist of Amber Smith. He is also a solo artist under the name Poniklo. As a singer, Poniklo's voice lies in the baritone range.

Early life and personal life

Poniklo was born in Budapest, Hungary. He grew up in Csepel. His father was a sewing machine-engineer. He started becoming interested in pop music at the age of 12. Since 1988 he has been a big fan of the Manchester artists such as The Smiths and Morrissey. However, his first vinyl record was of Pet Shop Boys' Actually.
Poniklo attended the School of Journalism of Bálint György for one year. However, after one year he realized that journalism is not his field. In 1995 he became friends with József Simon, who has been the album designer of Amber Smith, after seeing his advertisement in the Magyar Narancs. Simon was recruiting musicians in order to form a band who like The Smiths. Poniklo and Simon started writing songs together and formed the band Fanzine.

Amber Smith

Poniklo is the founding member of Amber Smith along with Péter Egyedi, and Ádám Földes. Later, Poniklo recruited Annabarbi's Bence Bátor, Időrablók's Oszkár Ács, Zoltán Kőváry, Tamás Faragó.

Solo project

Poniklo's first full-length studio album, entitled Poniklo, was released by Twelvetones Records under exclusive license from EMI services in October 2009. He recruited Michael Kentish as bass guitarist, Bence Bátor as drummer. The album was mastered by Paul Ven der Jockheyd at Foon Mastering Studios in Belgium. Poniklo asked his friend Jose Simon, who previously designed the covers of the Amber Smith albums, to design the cover for his solo album.
The album contains the track called Tomi which was probably written about The Moog's frontman Tamás Szabó nicknamed Tomi. The song has the line ″De miért kell dalokat írnos, ha nem szólnak semmiről?″ was published on vinyl in October 2016. This time a piano-led record, with many lyrics co-written by Kristof Hajos of The UNbending Trees fame.

Discography

As a solo artist:
With Amber Smith:
With The Poster Boy:
With SALT III.:
With Yonderboi:
With Gabriella Hámori:

Guitars