Musicworks/Interview

===Interviewhttps://www.musicworks.ca/featured-article/featured-article/braids-grimes-and-doldrums===
Grimes: Planet Claire
“Caladan,” “Shadout Mapes,” and “Sardaukar Levenbrech” are a few selections from the CD Geidi Primes. All the titles on this debut release by Grimes are lifted from Dune, Frank Herbert’s interplanetary sci-fi saga. The girl with the stage name Grimes does not hail from one of Herbert’s imaginary worlds; like the members of Braids, twenty-two-year-old Claire Boucher calls Montreal home.
 
Despite similar penchants for electronics and home recording—not to mention their friendship within the tight-knit Montreal music scene—these two artists don’t share much in common musically beyond their atmospheric, unearthly vocal approaches. Grimes’ music is much more influenced by modern dance music, at the same time as its reverb-drenched melancholy sometimes makes it sound like a long-lost ’80s synth-pop project. It also marks a challenge to our collective notions of what constitutes experimental music, since Boucher’s self-produced recordings are entirely the product of an untrained musician.
 
“I do consider my music experimental, because generally it’s kind of an experiment for me whenever I make something, even if it’s, like, ‘can I get this production to sound like [“Umbrella” singer] Rihanna?’” says Boucher. “But I’m not sure if people see it that way because I tend to work within pop structures. I feel like pleasurable music is often discredited because people think the avant-garde needs to be alienating. There’s lots of music that I consider experimental that isn’t treated as such in the media, such as [commercial R&B–hip-hop artist] Ciara, because the term doesn’t fit with her public image. Whereas there’s lots of music that gets labelled experimental on Pitchfork, just because the band’s image looks lo-fi.”
 
Though Boucher seeks to distance herself from lo-fi as we know it—and indeed, the image of four scruffy, guitar-wielding young men has now become a cliché that outstrips the original ideal of authentic, economical immediacy—her music does have a stripped-down, minimal aesthetic. The tracks on Geidi Primes and its 2010 successor Halfaxa often consist of simply a beat, a synth, and layer upon layer of Boucher’s voice. The young vocalist claims influences from R&B, medieval organum, Prince, and (again) the Cocteau Twins. Like Elizabeth Fraser, Boucher appears to be singing in an invented language, which adds to her music’s transportative power.
 
Boucher claims an intuitive approach to her writing process, but she isn’t trying to take her listeners to any particular planet in the Dune universe. “I feel like listening to music is a different experience for each person. Whatever it is that people want to get from my music, that’s what they should get.”
 
Like Braids, however, she is more certain of the positive force that the computer plays in her world building. “Without technology, I would have no interest in making music. I’m definitely not a huge fan of acoustic music—at least in terms of myself playing it. Without digital delays or MIDI,” she says with a laugh, “I would be very upset!”
 
Grimes’ magically reverb-drenched space-pop—combined with her striking, pixie-esque appearance—has garnered her notice worldwide. The Internet has allowed an artist with releases on a tiny label to receive attention from influential U.K. outlets like the NME, BBC Music, and The Guardian. And naturally, such profile-raising easily propels a young artist physically beyond her hometown.
Category:Interview Category:2011