NME/2012/Jan/Interview

Interview
Photoshoot
===Interviewhttps://preview.redd.it/af7u51s0rss61.jpg?width=2544&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e11b7b7d97a2ab8ff451a2dff6a54b260003fa87===
It started with the devil worship. Then came the speed-fuelled songwriting sessions. LAURA SNAPES meets the deranged idealist who's reinventing electro in her own unholy image
Claire Boucher is huddled at the top of a basement staircase in her parents' Vancouver home, telling NME about her new album, 'Visions'. "I underwent this extremely torturous experience. I never saw daylight," she recalls, blithely.
Turns out Boucher - AKA Grimes - went to somewhat drastic measures to make the record, locking herself away in her old Montreal bedroom for a month, blacking out the windows (she can only work at night) and staying up for days on end. "Shutting myself away was kinda great," she says. "I was like, I'm making such good art, and it feels like the best fucking thing in the world... but at the same time I'm so hungry and depressed and alone in this horrible room!"
This is just the tip of the iceberg, the 23-year-old comes armed with a backstory that reads like a Terry Gilliam film rejected for being too off-the-wall. "I denounced God one year at Easter, I was like, 12 or something," she chuckles, before regaling us with a tale of her formative years at a super-strict Catholic elementary school in British Columbia. Not that she abided by any rules...
"I didn't just stop believing in God - I decided I was going to be a witch and worship the devil. That made the problem significantly worse... There was a kid in my class, I think he had Asperger's; he thought I was the devil. He would throw water on me and be like, 'Leave, devil! Go back to hell!" It comes as little surprise that the cover of 'Visions' is a futuristic heroine in the Bladerunner mould.
She wrote her first song under her current moniker (the spacey, oriental 'Geidi Primes') a few years back, after a night caning speed with a mate - and for her latest endeavour she returned to the drug, again using it as a songwriting tool. "Speed makes me super productive," she says. "I was seriously isolated and hallucinating very vividly when I made it. I thought I was a prophet! I'd start hearing lines of music, filling in parts of the song that weren't there." Although you might eye-roll at someone getting whizzed off their tits making dance music, she says her intention has always been to make a record about idealism, about the constant search for something intangible in what she calls the spiritually aimless generation, with herself very much included in that generalisation. 
Saying that, Boucher's not exactly lazy. There's a wealth of her material already out there, mostly released on Canadian indie Arbutus, and she's so prolific that she's already working on her next two albums. For now, though, she explains, Visions' is the first thing I've made as an actual musician, or producer."
 
Inspired by children's choirs, TLC, Aphex Twin and manga franchise Ghost In The Shell, it's a wickedly abrasive and unholy collection of songs and alluring enough to see 4AD come calling (the label will release 'Visions' in the UK in the first half of 2012).
After that, the plan is to get back on the road- something that over the past 12 months Boucher has learned to relish. At SXSW last March, she was hellishly nervous, singing into her shoulder and avoiding the audience's gaze. In England a few months later, she became obsessed with Katy B, while a personal invitation to support Lykke Li in North America taught her the art of performance. I helped her truly conquer her old puke-inducing stage fright, while simultaneously bringing her voice to th- fore and unleashing the weird, synth-bound dancing that's now fast becoming her USP.
Meanwhile, the vibrant culture of America's south - she says her best show of the year was in Athens, Georgia, with her mate Doldrums showed her how narcissistic her existence of playing warehouse parties and getting fucked up was. It led to her shutting everyone off completely, and retreating to that Montreal bedroom to come up with 'Visions'. Looking ahead, Boucher says the quest now is to convince people to believe in her. "I'd lov to be like Timbaland," she says, in typically casual fashion. "I woul much rather be the engineer behind a pop star. At the current time, I don't have the means to find some girl and make into a pop star, so I have to do it myself!" We've no doubt she will. After an hour in her company, it's apparent that her determination is absolutely unflappable. Hyper ambitious and hyper accelerated: heaven forbid she slow her thrilling whirlwind to become a mere breath of fresh air.
GRIMES: THE INGREDIENTS OF A POP WEIRDO
Aphex Twin
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Waterfalls'- era TLC
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Mid-'80s Madonna
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Kate Bush's best bits
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A hefty dose of Zelda
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Grimes
Category:InterviewCategory:2012