The Sydney Morning Herald/2015/Interview

===Interviewhttps://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/inside-the-wired-mind-of-electronic-pop-pioneer-grimes-20151207-glh4ep.html===
=Inside the wired mind of electronic pop pioneer Grimes=
By Jenny Valentish
Updated December 7, 2015 — 2.54pm first published at 11.57am
In her formative years, Claire Boucher was the sort of gold-class geek who collected Japanese manga comics, watched too many X-Files episodes, danced at industrial clubs in her home city of Vancouver and spent long hours away from sunlight, fiddling with electronic equipment.
At university in Montreal, she chose a double major in neuroscience and philosophy and a double minor in electroacoustic​ studies, throwing in Russian literature. All this esoteric knowledge multiplied in the Petri dish that is her alter ego, Grimes, and was set to some seriously warped beats; even the Russian, which she has been known to sing in.
Four albums later, Boucher's still getting her geek on, even though the period between 2012's Visions and the new Art Angels has seen her signing to Jay-Z's management company and gracing the covers of the New York Times, Fader and Dazed & Confused. Still, her publicist warns me she doesn't want to talk about fashion, feminism or famous friends.
"This album is a documentation of the phases I went through in the last year," a much less prohibitive Boucher enthuses, down the phone from her home in LA. There was the Fifth Element phase, in particular the space-alien opera scene in Luc Besson's sci-fi flick. There was the Downton Abbey phase, for which Boucher learnt to play violin: "If the album was a TV show, this would be the classical music as it panned over peacocks and images like that," she says.
And then there's the emo phase. The single Flesh Without Blood is the result of a My Chemical Romance listening bender, which makes it all the more amusing for Boucher that early reviews have decided she's gone "pop". It's true, though, that her polished production and zeitgeisty beats would ordinarily take a platoon of producers.
In one Tumblr post back in March 2013, Boucher gave a tutorial on writing music, analysing the bpm of "Max Martin-y pop" and advising what mics would do the same job but cheaper. She posted screenshots​ of GarageBand​ and even patiently explained what cables we'd need to connect it all.
On Art Angels she has analysed the tenets of classic pop and added infinite layers of her customary sly humour – a referee whistle, cheerleader cheer or burst of cowbell. The titular song, for instance, opens with a diner jukebox guitar riff, before fusing the funk of Prince with the bubblegum Americana of Deborah Harry over some immaculately squelched beats.
Boucher has a habit of subverting everything. Her voice is the sound of glitter falling out of an envelope and into your keyboard. The chiming Butterfly might at first seem as airy as anything Mariah Carey has put out, until you realise Boucher is singing: "Why don't we get caught / Quit and sell livestock / Heck, get an old body / Got you moaning slow".
"There are hidden messages everywhere," Boucher says. "I do all kinds of things, but people rarely get them. A lot of the time I'm reciting really quiet poems under some of the songs."
Boucher's home studio is also decked out with ciphers. "When I look at world flags I think of the Industrial Revolution and all the things that happened to make the country exist, their legacy of art and war," she says. "They're good energy to have in a creative environment. I'm against nationalism, but I think flags contain a lot of information."
Unsurprisingly, Boucher rides her hypnopompic state, keeping a notebook by her bed to record those universes spooling in her skull. She rises at five in the evening to start work, preferring to toil when others sleep. "There's more space," she says. "Not so much energy everywhere."
While the most obvious crazy-genius producer to reference would be Phil Spector, Boucher's equally reverential towards industrial music icons such as Dave Ogilvie (Skinny Puppy, Killing Joke) and Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor – insular people who wrote, recorded and produced in their own bubble.
Like them, she's an autodidact, learning as much as she needs to get the job done. She's similarly all over the design aspect, painting the alien cover art and directing the video to Flesh Without Blood, which got more than three million views in three weeks. "I started drawing as a kid when I was really into comics, but these days I'm influenced by anime and horror, cartoonists Charles Burns and Dan Clode and terrifying medieval art."
Boucher calls the shots with the track listing, too. One chartbound song is cut off in its prime – before the first chorus. It's called Life in the Vivid Dream, and it's a sweetly nihilistic lyric over an acoustic guitar riff. "I could live in the world just like a stranger. I could tell you the truth or a lie. I could tell you that people are good in the end, but why would I?" She tweeted, "I was crying when I recorded it."
Collaborations are definitely acceptable though. This time it's with Janelle Monae on Venus Fly – what sounds like a legitimately terrifying girl gang retaliation over loopy bass and scratchy violin, and with Taiwanese rapper Aristophanes on Scream. Boucher found Aristophanes on SoundCloud and entreated her to lay down a predatory rap about oral sex, delivered intimately in Mandarin over a distorted guitar line and industrial beats.
Anticipation of Boucher's return to Australia is feverish; her Laneway sideshows sold out immediately. She's bringing her own support act in friend HANA, an electronic artist so mysterious that music sites are piecing together her identity by stalking her Instagram account.
Boucher is in no danger of losing her intrigue, though. She remains on the outside, looking out.
Art Angels is out now.
Category:InterviewCategory:2015