www.reneeruin.com: April 2017

Friday, April 28, 2017

Ides Of Gemini // "Heroine's Descent"

Taken from the forthcoming album, Women, released worldwide April 28th 2017.

Directed by Sera Timms

Director of Photography: Brian Sowell
Makeup by Cristina Waltz

www.idesofgemini.com

www.facebook.com/IdesofgeminI

www.riseaboverecords.com

www.facebook.com/riseaboverecords

Monday, April 24, 2017

The freedom being alone brings | An Interview with Planning for Burial

Your latest release ‘Below the House’ is an emotional soundscape made up of complex particles resembling a blood letting of melancholia and has a distinct feeling of both isolation and detachment. From the first listen it became apparent this was going to be an album that resonated strongly with me and similarly my own battles. Whilst this theme might not be new to those fans of Planning for Burial, it is presented on the new album in what feels like a much more precocious way, each song built with layer upon layer upon layer. How long was the process of getting to this point with ‘Below the House’ and what changed or evolved comparatively for you both personally and musically from the first LPS?

I started writing it almost immediately once I was done touring off of “Desideratum” because shortly after that is when I moved back to Pennsylvania, but I didn’t actually start recording it until March 2015. Over the course of a year and a half I would work on it sporadically whenever no one was home and I felt some kind of creative need to work on it. I believe “Below The House” has more in common with my 1st record “Leaving” as I looked at it like a purely writing/recording project, where as “Desideratum” was a record made to represent the songs I was playing live over the course of a few years. I got burnt out on those songs and playing live because I was playing them for 3 years or so before I even began recording it, so when I set out to make “Below The House” I was turning down shows left and right because I just wanted to focus on actual recording/writing again.

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There is a sense of higher orchestration on this album when you hear the music and lyrics come together. It feels almost like the music alone is speaking even more so than the words themselves in some tracks. How do you decide what works best vocally or musically or is it an accumulation of experimentations vs. written word on paper?

Yeah it’s definitely a back and forward between things I have written down and at times just saying words out loud while working on things and seeing where they go. A few of the songs would have different lyrics over the course of a few shows, or I’d have a musical section that I would completely abandon and try to use the words somewhere else. I never felt like I’m the best at articulating my feelings with words whether in lyrics or something like this giving an interview, I’m still feeling like I’m not even saying the right things about the record, so I tend to let the actual music do the talking for me as much as possible. Years ago when working on “Leaving” I would show early mixes to a close personal friend and my description was “I’m trying to make music that sounds how I actually feel inside”

Your music is often spoken about in terms of shoegaze, drone, post-rock, post-metal or gloom. Terms and categories aside, how would you describe Planning for Burial to the unbeknownst listener?

Most of the time I’m asked by family members or people I work with so I just tend to say “noise” to hopefully make everyone stop asking or wanting to look more into it. But honestly this one is hard, I guess I just tend to say “Blackened Slowcore” or “Gloom” which is the previous to me.

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One song that I really fell for instantly was “Warmth of You”. One that you jokingly admitted was deliberately not chosen as the single. I suppose this is because it does carry over some of your earlier heavier sound but I think it was the emotive undertone of the lyrics and vulnerability riding in on the guitar and the beautiful ending that commanded my attention. Why did you choose to focus on other tracks more so than others during promotion and of course when choosing the lead single and what is the picture behind Warmth of You?

I think this is a track that a lot of people feel doesn’t really belong but I feel like it fits the lyrical theme of the record the most, but I also understand that musically it is set apart from the others. I was worried that if I put the “pop” song out first people would be expecting more of that and I didn’t want to disappoint them when there wasn’t a whole lot of that on the record, though I’m trying now to go further into that direction for some future releases. As I was saying earlier I had become burnout out playing the old songs live so as much as I was looking to record and write songs I was happy with I also wanted to write some stuff that would be more exciting for me to play live as well.

What strikes me most about this new album is how multi-faceted and delicate it is. How has this progression changed the way you perform live and the way you write tracks?

With “Leaving” and a lot of the EPs before “Desideratum” it was 100% a recording project that I never thought about having to play live. Now I’m starting to work on versions of some of these songs that I can play live but “Desideratum” is an album made to represent the live show I was playing for years leading up to it’s release then I toured it for awhile. So with “Below The House” as I was writing and recording it I was also trying to figure out how I could play it live as well, I played some songs live for awhile before it was released that I have since stopped playing because I need to figure out still how to pull of some of the elements of the recorded version of the song live now.

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I’ve read that Planning for Burial couldn’t or wouldn’t work as a “band” per se because its really the cathartic experience of “you” that’s most important and I have to say I agree. If other people were brought in it would have to be something else entirely. There’s no denying there’s an element of self-absorption to PFB but it’s not entirely egocentric but rather important to the entire story. Would you agree to a point and how important is it for you to exact that story and exorcise yourself musically?

Planning For Burial is 100% me there’s no way around it, I just think it would not be the same if I started adding people. I have had some friends do some vocals here and there overtime and that’s fine and maybe in the future I’ll open it up for more collaboration. I’m a bit of a control freak when it comes to PFB and I also like the freedom of being alone brings, it’s easy for me to fly out to west coast and borrow a few amps or plan a tour or random one off shows because it’s only me that I have to worry about.

What are you most proud of with ‘Below the House’ and what track or tracks are most poignant for you?

Honestly I’m not sure it’s very hard for me to look at a record objectively when I still feel like I’m living it, in a few months or years maybe I’ll be able to answer this better. “Threadbare” & “Warmth of You” are the songs I probably look at the most because they are structured more like traditional “songs”.

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As I mentioned earlier the new album certainly seems much more elaborate and accomplished in hindsight to your previous 3 LPS. Whilst some may note the slight return of a “metal” sound I think you succinctly manage to loop in a harsher sound with more intricate detail. Is there a slight apprehensiveness about being lumped into the metal genre or the shoegaze/slowgaze genre for that matter?

I think they both come with their own limitations.

I always thought I was a huge metal head growing up but I find over time meeting a lot of people just who wrong I was about that, but it’s definitely a force within PFB, but I know I’m not “metal” I just make metal tinged music so I worried a lot about the legit “metal” press getting a hold of this record and tearing it apart because it’s definitely not a metal record, and it’s not a shoegaze record either, at times I feel like a lot of the current “shoegaze” scene is made of pop punk/indie bands who love pedals a lot and are just drenching their records with reverb and delay and the press is calling it shoegaze which is fine I like a lot of these records myself but I don’t feel like I fit in with that world either. I tend to want to operate with the outsiders doing experimental music whether it’s drone or noise, outsider metal or darker indie stuff.

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In terms of your lyrics style, what comes first – the words or the music? Or is it more organically connected?

I mentioned earlier that sometimes it’s the words first, or sometimes I have music and I’m singing random words based on “primal scream” theory or whatever just letting whatever is inside me out then I need to work on those to form a few a phrases into a full song, and sometimes I do one or both of these over a piece of music I end up not even liking but I still have a strong connection for the words so I’ll try to piece them to other things.

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More often than not some of our biggest fans or influences are our peers. You’ve surrounded yourself with a decent slew of decent musicians and artists. What and who are you personally listening to at the moment?

The record was definitely influenced by my love of the work of Phil Elverum and PJ Harvey, which I am still very much listening too, as far as friends who are making music that I am currently listening to a lot: I’ve been listening to the new King Woman record which I feel like I love more and more with each listen, and I’m also into a new record by some friends that I can’t mention yet because it’s not even announced yet though it’s been done for some time, I play on a song so all will be revealed soon enough. I’m also really really into the record “Everybody Works” by the artist Jay Som right now, she’s a solo artist and it just super connected with me.

Finally, I know you will be heading on tour soon, is there a chance your Europe and UK fans will get to see you live anytime in the near future?

I would like to say yes but my job is too unpredictable so it makes it very hard to make any solid plans for touring. So all I can say right now is I really don’t know.

https://planningforburial.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/planningforburial

http://planningforburial.tumblr.com

Friday, April 21, 2017

Lost At Sea (Chelsea Wolfe Remix) by Youth Code

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Who's that Girl? - Vanessa Matic

Age: Vampire

Ethnicity: Croatian/German

Currently live: Los Angeles

Day job (what pays the bills): Poetry/Art/Fashion/Acting/Editing

Hobbies/Aspirations: Music/ Painting

Education/Study: Journalism

What was growing up like for you?

I grew up in Seattle, it was mellow, I did ballet when I was younger but that wasn’t till I moved to New York and my family moved back and forth a few times. I have/had a well traveled childhood and life. My mom and dad are both really interesting, they’ve always influenced me my parents are both very into art, my fathers a professor and did a lot of writing in Europe, my mom was a lawyer but then became a house body to take care of me.

Have you always been drawn to words and more specifically poetry?

Since a young age but the first time I really felt I was writing something important was at age 16, I wrote something called bumblebees.. and the end of the song/poem was simple ‘’and you might find a place to be a king and I a queen, we use to be like bumblebees; I wrote this listening to Yann Tiersen soundtrack… I got into a lot of obscure stuff early

I was very inspired by Neruda, Nabokov, Sylvia Plath, Hunter S. Thompson, Burroughs, Ginsberg but then also people like Rowland S. Howard, Leonard Cohen, lyrics were to me a big connection to poetry.

Did you undertake any “formal” study in writing and/or literature?

Journalism for two years but I never believed you had to follow rules to be a good writer. I’m like that’s for the editors only now everyone is kind of an editor first.

Alongside your words it’s very rare to not also have an image. How do you explain the connection between the image of yourself you share and the words that coincide?

I don’t know what people see but I see myself like a fucked up virgin mary symbol, like when Bauhaus wrote rose garden funeral of sores. And I also believe we can change and manipulate image so much that it is a distorted reality of many things that are inside of ourselves, many emotions, and in time maybe it changes and our faces fade in different shapes. Also I just think words are the ultimate extended dream and they have nothing to do with image, they just become their own thickness; Their own air. Every day we’re inspired by more than ourselves, the dreams of words are fantasy and reality.

Sexuality, feminine power, madness, lust and catharsis are all ongoing themes through your work. There is also a very primal element to what you write. How would you explain or describe your own work?

Weird, not with rules; It’s definitely different from most poetry imperfect but perfect. It is music without sound. Done out of all emotions we carry within ourselves.

Is your process of writing more organic or do you sit down and write with a piece in mind?

Usually it just comes and goes, I have my notebooks but I also, guilty.. Write

on my phone little notes here and there, and it always comes from all inspirations, friends, love of my life, music, movies, books, scents that remind us of certain moments.

How difficult have you found it to get recognition for your work and find outlets to submit and publish your work?

It’s not easy poetry is very big but also not very big, I’ve been doing it since myspace, and before.. but that was the first time I blogged things and posted my material. C-heads found me first and I started to work for them.

What does writing mean to you? For me it’s a personal bloodletting with less mess. Would you say it is a cathartic experience for you also?

Writing is like letting out a ghost you believe will haunt a few people if they are greedy enough to get into the words and conjure the demon. Like magick, it always feels like I lost a breath after something I write and it helps me with my own conscience.

Your work as been featured in various publications such as C-Heads Magazine, Nakid Magazine and BLEND Magazine. Are there any plans to publish your own book of work?

There is of course, I’ve always wanted to publish a book I think I want to wait a little, maybe I will self publish but I would really like to wait and have them find me, Robert Montgomery was my mentor a few years back and we sat at Bowery Hotel I was drinking a Bellini and he said “You’re the best poet in the states.’’ and I gave him a funny grin I remember and I said “No I’m not’’ and he said “Well what do you mean?’’ and I wasn’t trying to be cocky but I couldn’t help myself I said “I’m the best poet of our generation.’’ I have a lot of fans actually I get a lot of fan mail for my poems, it kinda shocks me sometimes I hardly make an effort to answer all of them, because I don’t know what to say often. I’m escaping pieces of reality every time I write, so I try not to talk about it too much. And maybe one day more people will understand what I am doing as much as the fans and will let me do it more and more, till the world fills with poetry and is made into beautiful music.

Model, artist, poet… You have no shortage of talents. What’s next for Vanessa Matic?

I’ve made a short film as well in Berlin “Animal You Hide’’ I act, I also like film and screenplays. I don’t know what’s quite next.. I love music, I’m not a great singer.. decent unique one. Maybe I do that it’s the most nearest connection to poetry, like Cohen writing A thousand Kisses Deep.