Vogue/2011/Interview

===Interviewhttps://grimes-claireboucher.tumblr.com/post/14356553888/article-on-vogue-music-artist-of-the-week===
Artist of the Week: Grimes
by Freddie Campion
“It’s more about how you process information than the information itself,” says 23-year-old Claire Boucher (aka the art-pop maven Grimes). The Montreal resident is trying to explain why she describes her latest album, Visions, as “post-Internet.” “I like to think about it as cyborg-ism,” she says of the classification, a recently coined term which alludes to the fact that musicians can access more music today than at any other time in history. “It’s not about storing information in your head any more. You can get anything you want in five seconds.”
From Visions’ opening track, “Infinite ♡ Without Fulfillment,” it’s easy to hear just how much Boucher relishes the instantaneousness of the web. Not only is it her fourth album in less than two years, but its cacophonous electronic sound has the same nonstop fervor often associated with the attention-deficit YouTube generation—one minute we’re hearing angular, synth hooks, then intricately layered harmonies, followed by sumptuous Enya-style warbling (and all less than 30 seconds in). Boucher’s nimble falsetto, however, does a great job of keeping everything palatable, so instead of being sent into a dance pop–induced seizure, you can’t help but feel charmed by the sheer bravado of her everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach.
“When I first started out I was making really slow, psychedelic ambient music because it was all I could do,” Boucher says from her hometown of Vancouver (taking a break from Montreal on account of its “hardcore” December weather). “Then I started listening to a lot of Animal Collective, which is very loop-based, and I remember thinking, Oh, it’s just the same thing over and over with different vocals.”
Once she got her technique down, Boucher immersed herself in Montreal’s Anglophone scene (the English-speaking indie music community that also spawned Arcade Fire) and was soon a regular at an array of DIY warehouse parties— a surprising turn, considering she was enrolled as a neuroscience major at McGill University. It’s precisely this scientific background that got her asking the big questions about how music and technology interact.
Which begs the question: if the Internet has created a new genre of music, which is just a mélange of every other genre that came before it, what effect does she think it has on creativity?
“I feel like we’re at a huge jumping-off point now,” she says. “You don’t just have to be influenced by rock, or goth, any more. It’s okay to say ‘My influences are Tin Pan music from Bali and Rihanna.’ There are still so many combinations that haven’t been done yet. It’s a really beautiful period.”
Category:Interview Category:2011