Nylon Singapore/Interview

InterviewPhotoshoot
===Interviewhttps://www.fashiongonerogue.com/photo-shoot/grimes-nylon-singapore-2016-photos/===
it’s not the first thing that comes to your mind, but other than the quirky-goth persona that’s so often talked about, our cover girl and musician, grimes, strikes us more of... an architect. not the ones designing buildings though. If you’re familiar with christopher nolan’s inception (and who isn’t!), you’ll know that an ‘’architect’’ designs the dream space, building things that didn’t exist, couldn’t have existed.
which brings us to grimes. she has a hand in every part of her music – from writing and recording to producing and engineering – basically, constructing a world of layered electro-pop soundscapes. step into it and you’ll find, much like lucid dreaming, her music has a quality of freewheeling, anything-goes creative freedom, yet balanced with a near obsessive amount of control. we caught up with the multi-talented artist before her show at this year’s st. Jerome’s laneway festival, to talk about all things digital music and her latest album, art angels. Photographed by an le. text by amelia tan. 
like her music, grimes’ look has the nature of a chameleon. her hair in particular seems to have sampled all shades of the rainbow (apparently, she’s been colouring it since the age of 10); here, the strawberry blonde seems tame compared to the pastel pink and bright turquoise she’s sported before, but the party is really on the eyes. dark glittery pigments smeared above and below, topped off with a full fan of long lashes. grimes has spoken about her habit of rimming her eyes with kohl, and even using dark lipstick on her eyes, so her beauty style is obviously as beautifully unusual as her music is. 
MOST SUCCESSFUL SONGWRITERS are able to delve deep into relationships and heartbreak, the kind of heart-on-sleeve universal experiences that bind people together, soul to soul, confessional tunes that take an incredible amount of skill to craft. From a dirty 90s pop tune deals with the mysteries of love, desire? Or found or lost. Why else would we collectively chime ‘’my loneliness is... is killing me...’’, jokingly putting-on our beat multry ? for these dark lyrics, perhaps masked by pigtail ? ? and girls dancing in high school hallways?
And no doubt about it, Claire Boucher, better known as her music-making moniker, Grimes, is just as skilled. You won’t need to look very hard to realise that her previous critically acclaimed, raved-about album, Visions, released in 2012, has appeared in numerous best album lists, lauded for its original take on weird, experimental digital pop that works. Art Angels, her latests work, seems to be garnering as much hype and ? praise.
The only thing is – she isn’t ‘most’
songwriters. Don’t get us wrong, her self-penned, self-produced songs are infinitely fun, catchy enough to make you want to get up on your feet and dance along, and there’s typically a clear lyrical structure to them, but they ? less like ? diary and more like an ? ? of a creative writing workshop. Use your imagination! There are no rules! Boucher willingly takes that to heart. She’s Grimes, but also a vampire mobster? or, an Amazonian butterfly as the forests around her are being chopped down. She might even give you a succinct free?-hand account from the perspective of angels who cry polluted tears.    
It sounds like a dream world, but hey, welcome to her reality.
‘’I’d say, more than anything, this is the first album where I’ve delved deeply into my alter egos,’’ she tells us, when we asked about her latest album, Art Angels, ahead of its release. Interestingly, the album was launched digitally on 6 November, before its physical album in mid December, a testament of how in tune Grimes is to the whoole internet taking-over-the-world aspect of modern-day music.
For the whole alter ego aspect, you only need to look at her video for ‘Flesh without Blood/Life in the Vivid Dream’, for a visual example. She ? about as either a vengeful fallen angel, a Marie Antoinette lookalike, complete with poufy skirt on a tennis court, or a ?-gangster type that fits in just as well in a Quentin Tarantino movie.
That’s not to say that they’re at all frivolous. As one of the world’s favoured and formidable breakout artists  - even then, some might condemn? that she’s way more significant than the category implies – Grimes is an independent worker, preferring to take the lead in every part of her songwriting and music creation process. As the images fade to black, we get a glimpse of the vision behind her video: Grimes herself, who wrote, ?, edited and art directed the production. She somehow refers to this ambitious one-woman project casually, not as a burden. ‘’It definitely keeps me invested in my own work... Any judgement on any facet of the project is kind of a judgement on me, so everything must be good,’’ she says.
As for the frantic, multiple personalities she brings out in her songs, she’s all about embracing that part of her. All parts, really. ‘’Between touring and stuff, I’ve gotten a lot less shy as a vocalist and a writer, and I think a huge part of this album for me was writing from other perspectives and trying to really embody them,’’ she says. ‘’I just let my imagination go crazy, I employed method acting.’’
It’s refreshing. She obviously regards music as an artistic endeavour, and much like an actor, has her own black box, her studio, where she performs and ? to an audience of one. It just so happens that her portrayals seem slightly off-?.
In a video by Fader, she talks about one of the more well-documented characters: a vampire mobster. ‘’At first, I guess there was just Grimes. I don’t technically have control of her narrative anymore – she very much exists in pop culture now,’’ she says in? the video camera, as ? slowly ? over her use of third person perspective. ‘’Grimes as one person cannot represent more than a couple of ideas. That’s why I started developing some of the other characters, like really abstract from who I am and how I am.’’
Hence, the appearance of that The Godfather inspired character in ‘Kill V Maim’, a song that’s hardly heavy amidst high pitched vocals and danceable beats. ‘’B-E-H-A-V-E, arrest us!’’ she sings, like a banished? cheerleader, catchy and bright, but all the more iconic because of its context. Grimes knows how to have fun, but peer ?, and you’ll be privy to the genius of her music and lyrics.
Of course, that ? a ? amount of boldness. Now, we all know there’s a fine line between joining the ranks of eccentric but talented ladies in pop, including Lady Gaga and Björk, and the ? try-hard star that puts on weird costumes that they can’t really pull off, especially in the ruthless eyes of the fickle public. One misshap, and you’ll be dismissed as yet another wannabe, eye rolls ?. We’d say that it takes a fine personality, and a good amount of talent to back up the image of an eccentric star. Thankfully, Grimes has all of these. That, and a complex balance of both self-critique and self-confidence.
‘’I am often plagued with self-doubt, but I’m also possibly a megalomaniac. I ping pong between intense self hatred and delusions of grandeur on a daily basis,’’ she says, seemingly echoing most of our existence.
What turns that around though, is a single-minded desire to produce her own material, even as she has previously admitted that it’s a rare thing for female musicians to do. After all, it must be immensely satisfying to see this at the end of her album: all songs written and produced by Claire Boucher. Grimes has this to say: ‘’I’ve gotten a lot of confidence from producing. Even if everyone hates my album, I feel so happy with it, and so proud of myself for producing it myself. No one can take that away from me, so that gives me great confidence.’’                                                                         
It’s easy to mistake Grimes as the quirky girl – there is, after all, a whole list of evidence that points to this. The 27 year old Canadian did, after all, write a song in Mandarin, filled with agressive rapping and weird snarling on a bass heavy soundtrack, one that she collaborated with Taiwanese rapper, Aristophanes, on. She screams over her tracks all times?, something she says she has learned to incorporate after having performed live. And she did spend 11 years twirling? In a ballerina skirt, only to shave her head after discovering goth music. Her ? include, naturally, ? O’Connor, ‘’Because I really relate to how she ? ? to be popular, but is-accidentally popular, regardless’’.
The multi-talented singer also designs her own album artwork, plus, 14 unique illustrations that accompany every track on her album. ‘REALiTi’ sees a dinosaur-like skull, grotesque eyeballs looking out of its empty eye sockets, ? with ? ? and fire?, kind of like the freehand? Doodles the really artistic people you know used to sketch on their textbook covers. Then, there are wings and flowers and heart shapes and ribbona?, amidst teeth and leopard spots. They look like the stuff you see on ?.
It also says a lot when? you ? ? ? music video, ? on a yet unreleased song, on a whim. But that’s the kind of free-spirited person Grimes is, and exactly how the single, ‘REALiTi’, was revealed to the world. Also, fun fact: the music video was filmed in Singapore, with ? by the Bay and Haw Par Villa ? an impressive backdrop tp her ? dance moves. That’s interesting because most of us haven’t stepped into the abandoned, creepy Haw Par Villa theme park in years, but it’s immediately appealing for Boucher.
She chimes in: ‘’Well, it’s interesting because we never actually meant to make a ‘REALiTi’ music video, and my team didn’t even know my brother and I had made it.’’ The opportunity arose when they had a week off in Singapore, ample time to shoot a video, she says, and also because her brother used to live in Singapore and knew about the places. ‘’We went to Haw Par Villa because we hoped no one would stop us there, and they didn’t. Plus the creepy statues are amazing! My favorite shots are from that insane? Purple waterfall though.’’
But hold on before you classify her as an annoying ? that’s been ? about the internet? On Thought ? and Buttheed? ? – the now ubiquitous Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Think Zoe Deschanel’s character in 500 Days of Summer, or Natalie Portman’s in Garden State. In no way does Grimes fit into that stereotype of surface-level-only quirkiness. Sure, she might have a certain knack for a dance style? that resembles? Drake’s ‘Hotline Bling’ video?, except this isn’t ironic or affected?
For one, she’s both thoughtful and authentic, based on her frequent Tumblr postings, where she often drops new material, new artwork, or writes about what she’s currently up to. It’s where she gets to express her thoughts – not necessarily connect with her fans, but be herself. And that makes all the difference. Grimes isn’t some sort of manufactured pop star that treads carefully with every Instagram caption, plus, we know how that kind of image is really built on the quick-thinking decisions of managers that work tirelessly behind the scenes.
She’s daring, and the internet gives her a platform to air her musings, especially the ones that go against the status quo. As a female musician who works independently and loves discovering new ways to make music, she certainly has something to say about the male-dominated music industry. ‘’I’m tired of ? who aren’t professional or even accomplished musiciants continually offering to ‘help me out’ (without being asked), as if I did this by accident and I’m gonna flounder without them.’’ She laments in a 2013 Tumblr post ‘’Or, as if the fact that I’m a woman makes me incapable of using technology. I have never seen this kind of thing happen in any of my male peers...’' Normally, any other pop star would have to take the post down and apologise as humbly as possible. Not Grimes. On the other end of the spectrum, it’s the online realm where she also gets to be personal, by responding directly to her listeners? ‘’I guess it’s sort of a sad song. I was crying when I recorded it, I hope that’s okay, but I hope it brings joy.’’ she says of ‘Life in the Vivid Dream’, responding to a question posted on her Facebook page. Of course, being Grimes, she approaches these connections with the utmost casual air. To her, it’s just being a person. 
‘’Luckily, my good friends don’t really acknowledge my success and are pretty down-to-earth. Most days, I forget that Grimes is popular. I like to hang-out and watch my friends play video games and make spaghetti,’’ she says.
That’s kind of how she got involved in music in the first place – not some kind? of dramatic story, but purely by experimenting with friends. While studying at McGill University in Montreal, she volunteered to do some background vocals for some of her guy friends, only realizing later that she too could...
Even without knowing how to play the actual instruments, she was fiddling around with guitars and drums on a computer. This led to the release of her first two album, Geidi Primes on casette, and Halfaxa...
She ? her first album after a fictional planet in Dune, a series of novels by Frank Herbert, which she declares to us in one of her favourite science fiction series. They also create a nice context for her futuristic-sounding music.
But it was really 2012’s Visions that the musician exploded onto the scene, and all across the internet, to ? ? everywhere. Signed under record label 4AD, and recorded entirely using Apple’s GarageBand software, it’s an album that plays on her strenghts: that notable do-it-yourself mindset, coupled with obsessive music making. Based on the wealth of interviews and quotable-quotes she has since had, that album was created with just a three hundred dollars worth of gear in her bedroom. Boucher takes that whole ‘bedroom musician’ idea to an extreme – she wrote and recorded everything at night, under blacked-out windows, isolated and alone for three weeks, with the goal of letting her subconscious fill in the blanks.
It’s a first? Breakthrough album, though the musician acknowledges that she did ? the pressure to put out a follow-up album closely behind, ‘’but I wasn’t super concerned with it’, she says. ‘’Most great artists don’t release albums often, especially artists who don’t work with producers or songwriters. I would hate Grimes to ? on hype, which is a reason I wanted to go away and make something great rather than try to capitalise on the success of Visions.’’ she continues.
‘’I actually think the long ? fame has been helpful, because people are very excited for ? art,’’ she laughs. ‘’If I’m not satisfied with my record then I can’t expect anyone else to be, so I didn’t really have a choice. I had to keep working until it was of the highest quality.’’
At one point though, the hype over new? material? got so intense that there were talks of a lost album. In the intermin, in 2014, she had released a song and video titled ‘Go’, originally planned? for Rihanna, and meant as a thank-you to her fans. The unfortunate controversy surrounding it though, ? that the song was? reportedly rejected by the famous pop star and her ?, and rumours were ? that Grmes had? scrapped an entire album after negative fan reactions to the song. Boucher has denied this repeatedly, though she admits to having had enough material for an in-between album. On why she decided to drop the project, she says, ‘’it ? a lot of things, but mostly I got a new computer and kind of wanted to start again with a fresh plate? I had so many unfinished songs, it was kind of daunting. It seemed easier to just make something new.’’
That’s not to say that she didn’t do anything ‘productive’ after Visions. In her own words, she learned how to sing and play live music and numerous? Instruments, toured the world and built up a strong live act and following: created a book of ? ; and wrote, produced and performed hundreds of songs. ‘’I also learned how to colour and do digital art. I directed, edited, coloured and  ? in ? music videos and moved to Los Angeles. I also took some time to ? and make friends. I got to do some writing sessions and learn about music.’’ she says.
‘’Between touring and stuff, I’ve gotten a lot less shy as a vocalist and a writer, and I think a huge part of this album for me was writing from other perspectives and trying to really embody them. I just let my imagination go crazy, I employed method acting.’’ 
Her deep passion for music involves, not just the singing, but the whole process of putting together a song, and then, an album. ‘’I love making beats and I love recording vocals,’’ she professes, before candidly admitting that she’s not a fan of public singing ‘’I seriously love singing, but only in private!’’
In ?, who ? to work with ? ? outside ? as possible. Prior to the album’s release, only a handful of people were privy to her new music. They are, her brother, Mac Boucher, her boyfriend James Brooks, as well as Devon Welsh ? Majical Cloudz and ? of her old friends. ‘’The song ‘Belly of the Beat’ is actually kind of about how having an artistic relationship with someone is so intense? and non verbal. The only people I show music to whom I’m working are people I have this kind of relationship with. They don’t have egos, and they tell me when I suck and when I’m doing something great,’’ she says.
That said, a lot of music creation? happens in her own world. She has her own studio at home, a space to call her own, where she feels? less pressure to write within a certain time frame as she doesn’t have to pay hefty hourly charges. It’s also where she frequently works on her computer, working digitally with samples using a synthesizer, and now, for the first time, analog instruments like a guitar, drums, keys, as well as? a ukulele and violin that she taught herself to play. These real-life elements make the music sound more like a live track, an effect that she enjoys.
For her latest album, Art Angels, she speaks at lenght, and fervently?, about the sound design. ? ? of existing ? samples, she uses a lot of layering effects, using synthetic claps coupled with layers of real ones, as well as building sample packs of her own. She does this by going around her house with her microphone, hitting things or banging them together to make sounds. These are then looped, and ? with her vocals, to give off that ethereal, spacey effect of her music mix, now on more sophisticated Ableton software.
‘’It’s completely different in basically every way,’’ she comments on the album, comparing it to Visions as well. ‘’It’s much more lyrically and sonically developed. I used a different DAW [Ableton], and tried to stick to live instrumentation as much as possible. I used a completely different sound palette than I did on Visions.’’
‘’Like Visions, I guess it is a concept album, but I think most of my albums are concept albums. That said, I go a lot deeper on this one though. I think it Visions was a black and white painting, this is an album where I used colours.’’ It’s also the first album that’s professionally mixed, she says, so the sounds feel fuller.
Many a music critic have called this her most accessible? And radio-friendly piece yet, and maybe? It’s due to the conditions she had put herself through while recording her previous material, but her vision for Art Angels is a lot clearer, not added by extreme conditions. She ? wildly but flawlessly between tender and agressive, dark and light, freedom and control, but it’s a release filled with bright vocals, and an addictive kind of dance ?. ‘’I think Visions was a headphones record, whereas this is a driving record.’’ she says, which she attributes to her big move to Los Angeles.
Would she consider herself a perfectonist? ‘’Yes and no.’’ She quickly answers. ‘’I’m super OCD about the music and stuff, but I also like to keep things messy. I have to stop myself from not nitpicking. I’m trying really hard to learn how to stop and let things be.’’
The whole ‘’letting things be’’ mentality is interesting when you consider how Grimes, perhaps suprisingly, made it to the cover of the ? Girl issue in the US version of NYLON. She’s not like Taylor Swift or Kylie Jenner or Selena Gomez, all brilliant, but also the ? queens of ?-girls, who dominate the press and gather huge followings on Instagram. ‘’To be honest I don’t really know what an ?-girl is.’’ she says. ‘’I’m definitely not an ?-girl because I’m very unfashionable and I don’t have many friends.’’ Rather appropriately, she goes shopping on Etsy, describing her personal style as a mixture of found objects, audacity and comfort, and talks about currently ? a ? ? the video game Metal? Gear, and DC’s Harley Quinn.
But after a long interview where she takes great care to answer every one of our questions, and as interestingly? as possible, we see why.
‘’Oh my gosh, problably every song’’, she says when asked which of her past material she’d most like to ?. Wisely though, she continues, ‘’That said, I think the ? of Visions and my previous? work is part of what’s special.’’
That daring acknowledgement of growth, along with a fierce independence to write and produce her own music, is, well, special, and counts her among the great, and quirky, female? Influencers of our time. Surely, hers isn’t the easiest way to do things - ? us, having to write, produce, record, and engineer your own music takes great talent, technical know-how, as well as perseverance – but that’s exactly the kind of empowerment that motivates Grimes; having the opportunity to build her world, put together her own music, and truly call it her own. That’s, basically, it.Category:Interview
Category:2016