File under: Found Objects

From my archives… whilst peeling through drives.  Night Shift!  An acoustic-ish cover I created with my friend David Larring in 2007 for ABC.  We were all so much younger then… 🙂

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NYE: The Young & The Restless

December 29th!  Available on BandCamp.

CBS’s Young & The Restless ring in the New Year with a cover of Auld Lang Syne which I produced featuring an incredibly talented artist, Lea Cappelli.

This downtempo, dreamy chill-out version features a style of music I’ve been creating for the show over the last year.  I’m quite excited to share this one…

Happy New Year!  x Rie

 

The Dark Matter in the Soul

At One in the morning (PST), I was wide awake.

I begin to get excited about matters concerning Gigantic Concepts late at night.  This can start as early as 20.00 and keep going until oh-4 hundred.  If you were in England & just waking up, I went on a twitter-rage.  Actually, there was little rage, just a Eurostar of streaming thought, all precisely 140 (or under) characters long.

I’ve always had questions.  I’m very Curious.  My mother would say that it killed some cat, but I believe carelessness killed cat.  Not curiosity. If anything, curiosity helped the cat make an honest assessment or evaluation.  I questioned my history teacher on the accuracy of the writers when I was young.  Which meant I was immediately drafted onto the debate team.  I do really enjoy a rabbit hole, leaving me with more questions.  Though eventually they lead to a new perspective & that’s indulgently satisfying for the moment.  Am I introspectively absorbed inside myself?  Maybe.  Sometimes.

A friend mentioned a personality test… and I kind of like testing these things to see how accurate they are.  After all, I have boxes of personal monologues, love getting right to the bottom of anything and what else is there to do at midnight?

So, Enneagram: I think it’s worded in peculiar ways; especially when manipulating immature qualities.  The second problem is that I personally believe we are in a state of becoming who we originally were at a small age, only in ways which function successfully (i.e. mature vs immature).  And third, there’s a second part to the test using opposites that I don’t quite feel are opposing but can work in tandem.

As it turns out, I’m “quite self-aware, sensitive and reserved”.  Not much news there.  But apparently I’m also having an identity crisis.  Which is… Amusing.   But, just maybe, it could be perceived that way.  In fact, a baring of ones soul & continual questioning over the “whys” to our existence could, indeed, be perceived that way.  OK, crisis it is!   Identity is so very complex, not easily isolated like an organism on a petri dish.  In fact, I was chatting yesterday with a friend about the movie A Thousand Clowns (which I watched one night in a hotel room with a gorgeous composer… and wrote a song about a few days later).  The clowns represented facets of our personas as they emerge from an old VW Beetle.  And I can see how – if I was honest about my self-discoveries and moments of enlightenment (knowing it will continue to happen until I die, though loving the adventure) – I can see how that could be perceived as a lack of identity.  Especially if I’m hitting the reserve button on my intensity & passion.  After all, I can barely pick a genre in music.  But it goes deeper:

Feeling a void is profound & amazing, not a lack.  Essentially, connecting to the Dark Matter within oneself.  We’re taught to See and Create art by drawing the negative space; the shadows.  They outline everything.  They’re so very important.  (like the rush of Feeling Important when on the edge of the ocean or a cliff – our smallness against something profoundly big).  We hear around silence.  The void emphasises the structure.

So, I’m flawed.  Isn’t everyone?  I tend to see this like any organic matter or precious stone.  Which, again, can be difficult for the some… The comfort in being limited but limitless.  Unafraid/unashamed of weaknesses.  What’s the worse than can happen?  I can’t explain this one, but reality is much easier to work with/around than fantasy.  Without a objective evaluation, it’s difficult to make a decision or know how to respond.  Or ask the right questions.

To the benefit of the test, it did point out how personalities function on a scale of Mature to Unhealthy.   Disciplined to Selfish.  Slight bonus: I’m not a tormented soul (personally not sure how tormented artists even create; one cannot pour out of a depleted / black-hole state).

Curious about Problem #3?  My twitter feed is stacked with those opposites which I don’t believe are Opposing.   P.S. I’m a Sagittarius.  So what does that say??

Turn it up, Captain.

I collect my own sentences. In search of meaning. The first ones to come to mind… one-minute. Go:

… the force of attraction.

… push and shove until you love me.

… the empty distance between us.

… do you hope to be found only to get lost & bound up? As lovers do…

… i try to quit but I’m aching all tangled in you.

… do you see the rise and fall?

… while stone and sand keep shifting.

… oh the alchemy of love, and chemical waste!

What connections do I make on a deeper level? Nothing is unseen. This one minute experiment – the above, pulling lines from songs like fortunes from an imaginary hat. I want to be effortless, but there is a force in my passion… an intensity that will not stop.

What will become of us? Just like this planet: Violent and Fragile. We are these things. Add fire.

This aired (does it still?) for a long time to promo the CW’s Vampire Diaries.

Obsessions With Constellations

“Are we lost, all alone, only human & under the stars?”

It’s not all heartbreak and exhibition, though these elements are inescapable.  As a lyricist I infuse threads with obsessions, fantasies I don’t/but want to reveal. Examining my own patterns (patterns don’t get you into trouble, they communicate where you are) beyond bittersweet love songs as I started pulling tracks I’d written to re-learn them (yes – I completely forget how to play my own songs!!)… I’m discovering themes.

Train stations.  I love train stations.  Birds accidentally fly in, people pop out for a quick smoke, A city’s life is breathed.  In Manchester, I sometimes write at Pret-A-Manger in Piccadilly: “curious…I became a passenger for life” – Passenger (King to Camden), Victoria, The Way It Ends (Glasgow).

Travelling. I believe my obsession with constellations is more about present navigation than getting lost in a fantasy of the future.   Oh! Stargazer: ships from an ancient world bringing little girls china dolls and the imperial world spices. Subject to the plunder of mermaids – a Captain battling sirens by setting course on co-ordinates.  And High Time captures a desire to connect the dots, the fragmented pieces of love (home) -lost/found can also be shifted into this anatomy of my internal Night Sky.  There are apparently 88 Modern constellations.  42 may be the meaning of life, but 88 is my favourite number. *wink*

I write about charting co-ordinates to a lost loves’ heart in All I Can Say. ” and how “…you know I’d cross the stars for your love…” in Where You Are.  These are the songs I can immediately think of… perhaps there’s more.

Under The Stars was never released.  Oliver The Penguin was a one-off side project… a personal exploration to poetically fuse laws of physics with their application inside human relationships.  But you can download it off my SoundCloud.  x

Passenger Sneak Peek!

Bedtime Stories ::: Pt 2 ::: || Passenger

Part 2 of my ongoing series of EPs is underway!! Here is our music video teaser for the 2nd EP I’ve recorded with Bob Hartry, and illustrated by Erin Althea.

x Rie

Erin Althea

Short clip of the music video I made with Rie Sinclair. Full-length release in May!

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DTLA Art Walk || Music and Animation 1/9

Bedtime Stories || Oh Stargazer

NEXT SHOWING!  Join us again for the  next showing & live performance of Oh Stargazer at Curio Los Angeles during the DTLA Art walk this January. CDs, lovely hand printed eco friendly totes, Stargazer posters & live performances during the evening!

6 – 10pm  •  Jan. 9, 2014

Oh Stargazer (Produced by Steve Hopkins) is the first in a series of Electronica/Downtempo EP’s to be released over this next year under the BEDTIME STORIES collection.  Read more: OH STARGAZER.

Animation & illustration created by Jessica Poon

BEDTIME STORIES || Oh Stargazer available 11/12/13

 SoundCloud ||  iTunes  ||   Bandcamp