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Noise Experimentalist Evicshen Talks First LP 'Hair Birth,' Crafting Xenomorph Face Masks & More

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The Boston-based instrument maker, video and sound artist tells GRAMMY.com about writing her first LP, making an album cover that can be used as a speaker and why noise music can be so "liberating"
Noah Berlatsky
GRAMMYs
Jul 17, 2020 - 10:03 am

Watching noise musician Victoria Shen (A.K.A. Evicshen) perform is like watching a mad scientist transform into a joyful noise cyborg. In an amazing 2019 video taken at New York's Ende Tymes Festival of Noise and Liberation, she carefully tweaks a table full of boxes bristling with knobs and wires before wrapping cables around herself, sticking a wire in her teeth, and thrashing around so that the movement of her body itself elicits grinding spits of feedback.

Born in San Francisco, Shen went to the Museum School in Boston in 2007 for illustration. But a class on synth construction with instrument maker Jessica Rylan changed her direction. "She really liked the way I soldered," Shen says, "so she hired me and I worked for her for five years on weekends soldering electronics." As a result, Shen learned music and noise "in a totally backwards way, starting from the nuts and bolts of practical stuff and later coming into the theory, and graduating to doing printed circuit board layout design."

Shen's been an instrument maker, video artist and sound artist for about a decade, and has put out a couple of releases in various formats since 2018. She's releasing her first LP, Hair Birth, this year on American Dreams records: 45 minutes of hiss, roar, shriek, feedback, and vibration, with an album cover that can be used as a speaker. 

Coming into music from what she calls "the technical back end" of construction gives Shen a unique perspective. She loves building the things that make the noise as much as the noise itself. She talks very quickly, because she's got so many ideas she can barely get them out in time. When you listen to her it's hard not to get swept up in her enthusiasm for making things and banging them together until they make a satisfyingly cacophonous noise.

Noise music can feel angry or dystopian, but you've described your own sound work as optimistic. What's optimistic about noise?

Noise music is so liberating because there are no rules. We have this idea and this notion of the way music should work and what a musician is. And then there's noise!

I think noise highlights that the rules of music are just things we've assumed. Because there are no real rules in noise. If anything, you're encouraged to break rules, to transgress rules. When you present work that doesn't have any embedded, meaning it's up to the audience to interpret it. So it forces them to take an active stance. I'm trying to shock people out of complacency, so that they're present.

How did you become interested in noise music?

I worked with Jessica Ryan, who's a pioneer in noise music. She makes these chaotic synths. They are themselves chaotic systems that are designed with feedback in mind. One small change in the parameter will result in really complex aperiodic sounds. So that completely dispenses with the idea of reproducibility and mastery over your instrument. There's always an element of chance.

Her instruments fundamentally have this chaos in them and so it attracted a lot of noise musicians. She herself was a noise musician.

So, she would bring me to shows. That was my introduction to the local noise scene. It was kind of mind-blowing. I don't think I was quite ready to enter that scene quite yet!

What prompted you to start performing yourself?

When I was 25, I fell head over heels for this guy in San Francisco. It made me feel so alive. And we enjoyed the same kind of music, and that inspired me to start this band called Trim. The logo was an illustration of a pubic hair triangle, which was the "T" and then one errant pube like kind of strays out and spells the rest of our name.

At first maybe it was a kind of rock, maybe kind of metal because we had guitar and drums. But then I dispensed with the guitar and it became synth drums. But then the drummer moved to New York and  I was performing more and more as a solo musician.

The guy who inspired me, me and him weren't even really dating; I'd just see him when I came to San Francisco and we would hang out. But he epitomized to me the weird funky underground aspects of San Francisco with comic books writer and graffitti and skateboarders, and living in the moment. His small presence in my life had huge consequences for me down the line.

I know you make your own instruments. Do you have instruments you made and now use regularly, or are you making new ones all the time?

I'm making new ones all the time! I have a bandsaw that I have a contact mic on. I modified a stethoscope to turn into a microphone so you can listen to your heartbeat. I made this…I don't know what you'd call it. I put audio tape on a spindle on a motor. And I can change the speed and direction of the motor. And then on my hand I have a glove with tape heads on the fingertip. So I applied the tape heads onto the tape spindle. And it plays audio that way.

So I'm always trying to add stuff to the sound palette.

So for this album, Hair Birth, the cover actually functions as a speaker. How did you come up with that idea?

At the end of 2018, I was figuring out how to make speakers by winding magnet wire. And I found out that you can make planar speakers. You take a coil and you can integrate it into a single plane and then distribute the magnets across the back of it and then you have a flat speaker.

And then I thought it would be really amazing if we could have it render an image. And so I did a bunch of different stuff. I embroidered fabric with conductive thread and made fabric speakers. I turned a cassette tape into a speaker; I turned a drum into the speaker. I made a levitating speaker using four coils that switch polarity really fast.

It was while I was in Copenhagen with sound artist Jenny Gräf that I developed the workflow to actually make images. And the first image that I made into a speaker was Else Marie Pade, who is a Danish electronic music pioneer and composer. And I was like dude, I'm going to make an LP jacket that you can listen to the LP through! So that was when the Eureka moment came, when I was in Copenhagen.

What did your label American Dreams say when you said, "Okay, I'm going to turn this album cover into a speaker"?

Oh my god, they were so into it.

Is it expensive to make these covers?

It's very laborious. I'm completing the last few right now, but I've been working on it for months. It's conceptually very simple. You take this copper foil and adhesive on one side, and paste it on the jacket. Then you put it under a vinyl cutter so the vinyl cutter will cut out the pattern.  And then the difficult part is taking out the negative space with tweezers. And then you have to solder the coil together.

So you have to do them one-by-one by hand? How many of these are you doing?

Yeah, by hand. There's 100 that we're selling with the speakers.

Are you working on anything else in lockdown now?

I've been secretly really loving lock down! [Laughs.] I've had so many projects that were back-burnered—things I would ordinarily feel too guilty to devote a lot of time to.

So recently I've been co-teaching this introduction to digital fabrication class at Harvard. It's laser cutting, 3-D printing, electronics, embedded programming, I was able to whisk away part of that lab so I have a couple 3-D printers at home. And I've been making masks. I made a fluorescent day-glo mask, and then a xenomorph face-hugger mask. And then I made this mask that has an LED smiley face if you're talking in a low tone, and then it turns into a frowny face when you're yelling.

I'm trying to figure out how to cut my own records at home. And I've also been working with micro-phonographs. The Audubon society released these trading cards with tiny platic discs, tiny plastic records on them which described the birds and played birdsong. And they also released these phonographs you could play them on. And what's interesting is that instead of the plate moving or the record spinning, it's the needle that moves, because it's mounted on a motor. It spins from the center outward, which is the opposite of conventional records.

I've been figuring out how to replicate them by making silicone molds of the microphone grafts and then pouring like a very low viscosity urethane into them.

There's not enough hours in the day, I'm telling you!

Are you living alone?

I have a roommate but I share an apartment that's pretty spacious for Boston, I'd say.

So you're not in her way when you're pouring fluids and things.

I kind of am, actually. [Laughs.]

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Tame Impala

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Tame Impala Checks In From Hibernation

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Kevin Parker talks to GRAMMY.com about how he’s surviving without touring and finding comfort in disappointing those looking for "Psychedelic Jesus"
Laura Studarus
GRAMMYs
Sep 2, 2020 - 8:46 am

Kevin Parker is calling from under the covers. Given 2020's stay-home ethos, bed seem like a logical place to conduct business, even though the Tame Impala frontman swears it's only because it’s morning in his time zone, and he hasn’t quite summoned up the energy to start his day. 

His comfort with isolation makes sense—he is, after all the guy who named his sophomore album Lonerism. As the uncertain year stretches on, Parker says he’s enjoyed the extra time at home and in the studio, where he writes and records each part of a song from the ground up, a talent he recently demonstrated on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert." And while Tame Impala’s back catalogue is laced with arena-worthy rock, it’s not a stretch to call this year’s The Slow Rush a more introspective release. Fitting, given that after his tour was cut short in early March, fans were relegated to dancing along in quarantine. ("People have been telling me that's weird how the lyrics of this album ended up being kind of relevant to now," says Parker. "Which obviously, I didn't anticipate.")

Calling from his home in Perth, Australia, Parker spoke to GRAMMY.com about how he’s surviving without touring, finding comfort in disappointing those looking for Psychedelic Jesus and the unsinkable Kanye West.

What's been your favorite souvenir during all your travels?

Sukajan Man in Harajuku, in Tokyo. I've been in that place a couple of times. And each time we've been back they've recognized us and we just kind of had a chat. I think I bought a jacket off him 10 years ago. Sometimes fans give us presents, just stuff they've made. I've got a box of stuff from over the years. It's full of weird bracelets and letters. Other than that, I try to pack light, so I'm not much of a collector.

I love that you save the greatest hits of fan gifts.

That's what it really is!  Everything ends up in my suitcase, that's not drugs. Sometimes it's like a little gift box and then on the way to the airport you lift the lid and there's like 50 bags of weed. It’s like, oh, shit!

How did you make peace with not touring behind what's obviously a very summery album?

I haven't yet! I believe we'll be able to at some point. If it was just me, missing out on touring and I knew the rest of the world was doing it, and going to festivals and stuff, then I think it would be more difficult to deal with. But the fact that everyone's in the same boat, it kind of just makes me think we'll get that chance. I was touring Currents for five years. The fans are obviously waiting for new music, but it just makes me think if we get out in a year or two, then it's like it'll still be fresh, and it'll still be good. People have been telling me that's weird how the lyrics of this album ended up being kind of relevant to now, which obviously I didn't anticipate. Obviously, I can't see the future. So, it's kind of it's a wild coincidence.

Did you have sort of any indications going into that last show that things were going to be shut down?

Yeah, it was kind of building up in intensity. The day after the second L.A. show was when it really became obvious that we shouldn't play another show. The last one was like, in hindsight, oh, maybe we shouldn't. But everyone was so naive then. I like to believe that no one that was there was spreading it at that point it.

You hit upon a really great point that none of us are dealing with FOMO right now. But on a personal level, have you felt pressure to make this year meaningful or productive when you know you can't do a large portion of your job?

There's always things to do. In fact, I've been kind of the busiest that I have been in a long time. In the last few months, doing non-music stuff. The internet exists, and I've got a studio. I'm shooting videos and doing live streams, like what I did for "Stephen Colbert." And you know, and people still listen to music. So, for that reason I'm extremely blessed I'm extremely privileged that my craft. While touring is a big part of it it's not the only part of it.

It also seems like your process is so insular compared to a lot of other artists that it's not a logical leap for you.

And for that reason, I kind of lucked out there. I kind of feel like my process was built for this time. It almost feels like I've spent the last 10 years doing something that was made for global pandemics.

How does the guy that makes escapist music find his own form of escapism?

By making it. That's kind of always what I've loved so much about making music since I was really young. As soon as I was making music, nothing else mattered. It was a weird kind of combination of escaping it and facing it at the same time. You know, like singing about something that was negative was simultaneously a way of escaping it and dealing with it.

Are you able to step back and distance yourself when you hear your music in the wild?

I'm getting better at that. I think in the last few years I've just been able to shake that kind of cringe that I feel when I hear my song in public. I'll be at a bar or something with friends, or like going to a restaurant, and I'm with people and a Tame Impala song comes on, a few years ago, I would have huddled into a ball and laid under the table. While everyone's looking at me laughing. Now I'm kind of more in the opposite. I'll try and alert everyone.

Any particularly memorable moments?

I was at a wedding many years ago, and someone put Tame Impala on just kind of as a prank. And I cleaned the floor out, which was pretty funny.

When you aren't clearing out dancefloors with your music, what kind of dancer are you?

Well I need to be drunk for starters. I'm not busting moves; I'm definitely just grooving. The only way I can actually dance is if I'm one hundred percent feeling the music and not actually thinking about what I'm doing. Again, I'm getting better at not being cringy on all fronts.

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Tame Impala performing at Flow Festival 2019 in Helsinki
Photo credit: Laura Studarus

You're currently working a lot on your own, but it seems like there was a period of time there when you were the featured artist. And after so many collaborations, do you still have the ability to get professionally star struck when someone reaches out to you?

I'm a sucker for getting star struck, I don't know what it is. It takes a lot of mental coaching to remember be myself, which I'm eventually able to do. But whenever I met anyone I like, I just forget. I forget the golden rule that no one's larger than life, everyone is just human, which is something that I am instantly reminded of every time I meet someone famous, like two minutes into meeting them. I'm resigned to the fact that they'll be disappointed that I'm not Psychedelic Jesus.

Who would you love to meet and/or collaborate with?

If I answer that, I might jinx it. If anyone ever saw that I'd completely geeked out, then they might be hesitant to actually ask because they'll just think I'm gonna be a fanboy. We'll put it this way—a lot of those names have started to get crossed off. Kanye West was top of my list, easily. I mean, we didn't fully get to do something properly. But I'd love to do something to Daft Punk, that'd be really cool. They're one of those ones where it's like, I don't want to mention it too much.

So, what's your stance on blowing out birthday candles? Do you keep your wishes a secret as well?

Yeah, no way, that makes it not come true. That's if you believe in wishes.

Do you?

I don't know, what's the deal with wishes? Is there a wish God that's receiving all these, then sort of administers them? Who are you talking to when you're wishing?

I feel like a wish is more something you tell yourself and then [get] yourself in the headspace to take care of whatever it is. Where a prayer is something you're addressing to a higher power.

Well in that case, tell everyone, because then it puts the most pressure on you actually do it.

I was gonna follow it up and ask you how you felt about fate, but I'm worried we might be getting into Psychedelic Jesus territory.

I don't believe in fate as much as I realize that we are all atoms bumping into each other. We're all just lots of little balls, floating around in space, bumping into each other. And so, in a way, we have no control over what we do because our actions are just defined by chemicals.

How do you feel about Kanye West's supposed to run for president?

There might be some mental health issues. And then with that in mind, like, you can't really make assumptions on anything. Kanye, he's built his life, and career on being extremely ambitious. He's ambitious to a fault, probably, but that's always been the power of Kanye West—he's not been afraid to fail. I think like he has less fear of failure than most people. Which is one of the secrets to his success. When he tries to be president, and fails, he'll start a shoe company and make a zillion dollars. It's like you win some, you lose some. And I think on Kanye it's just a brand, it's on the grand scale. And same with being a being a legendary hip-hop artist.

I love the way you frame that because finding our way out of fear of failure is something a lot of us have to do.

I think everyone can take a slice of that. Because yes, I'm afraid of it. The fear of failure, probably like everyone else, is the thing that's held me back the most. Basically, my New Year's resolution every year is to not be afraid of failure. Being fearless with following my passion—music—got me where I am today. Every time I've thrown caution to the wind and done something [that] feels [good], it's paid off... and where I haven't done something because I've been afraid of failing, I've regretted it.

What's making you the happiest right now? 

Maybe that I don't hate that the whole album cycle has ground to a halt, because I don't want this album [The Slow Rush] to be the album that reminds everyone of this time. I'm kind of happy for the album to be in hibernation. If we start touring again after coronavirus, whenever that is, we'll play shows around then. For the rest of people's lives. It's the music that reminds them of the time when coronavirus ended, then that's all I can hope for. That's all I want. And so for that reason I'm kind of okay for it to be in hibernation. [Laughs.] My record label would be screaming if they heard me saying that right now.

Capturing Los Angeles' COVID-Closed Venues

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Tei Shi

Tei Shi

Photo courtesy of Downtown Records

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Tei Shi Has Found Her Happy Place

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Ahead of releasing her sophomore effort, 'La Linda,' the "mermaid music"-maker spoke to the Recording Academy about moving to L.A., Spanish representation and continuing to work with her "creative kindred spirit" Blood Orange 
Laura Studarus
GRAMMYs
Nov 11, 2019 - 11:00 am

There’s a certain romantic connection artists share with New York City. As Valerie Teicher Barbosa recalls, for a time the city acted as an effective creative incubator while she made music as Tei Shi. It was where she introduced herself in 2013, anonymously at first, with a series of crystalline vocal loops she called "mermaid music." It was also where she met collaborators, including Blood Orange (Dev Hynes), and where she wrote and recorded her first Tei Shi album, Crawl Space. But after closing what she calls a "chapter with a lot of baggage," she knew it was time to leave. 

Like many artists before her, the Buenos Aires-born Barbosa ventured West, landing in Los Angeles' Elysian Park, a neighborhood known for hiking, Dodger Stadium, and—like most places in Southern California—year-round sun. 

"It was almost like rebirth, I was so much happier immediately," she recalls of her relocation at the top of 2018. "I would do writing in my little studio and then I would go lie outside for a couple of hours and get some ideas and go back in…It was a really different experience for me. I felt like I had stepped into this otherworldly paradise."

That vitamin D-saturated euphoria informed her forthcoming sophomore effort, La Linda, arriving on Nov. 15 via Downtown Records. Barbosa is especially eager to put La Linda out in the world, as it spent most of 2018 lost in, as she diplomatically puts it, "label purgatory." A showcase of her skills as both a musician and executive producer, La Linda features Hynes again on the hushed duet "Even If It Hurts." Describing Hynes as a creative kindred spirit, Barbosa was pleasantly surprised to find a new coterie of collaborators this time around. As she describes, cherry-picking the right person for each job was what she needed to infuse her humanity-forward R&B/pop with a slick sheen. Ahead of the release, Barbosa spoke with the Recording Academy about Spanish representation, refusing to fight fate and a surprisingly influential apartment building.  

What does "La Linda" mean to you?

"La Linda" to me is like a place. It's representative of how I was feeling during the phase when I was first writing the album. I had just moved to L.A. from New York, and felt like for six months after I moved here I was in this oasis. I was so inspired and felt so free. I felt in this really beautiful state of mind. It was sunny and beautiful and nature all around. Every day I would wake up and I felt like, oh open space. I can breathe and take my time with things.

I live in a house now. I would do writing in my little studio and then I would go lie outside for a couple of hours and get some ideas and go back in. It was something that I had never experienced before. I feel like in the past, when I made music it was, "Okay, we have this amount of time in this studio." It was a really different experience for me. I felt like I had stepped into this otherworldly paradise. 

I think what was going on internally and in my life on a personal level was playing into that. I felt like when I was leaving New York I was closing this chapter with a lot of baggage. When I came here it was almost like rebirth. I was so much happier immediately. I think that combined with the sun and the green just made me feel so euphoric. I wanted the album to reflect that. All the songs on the album aren’t happy songs by any means, but I wanted it to feel very beautiful and lush and bright. The title was something I came across; it was an apartment building called La Linda. It had this sign. A really cool sign. I took a photo out in front of it. In Hollywood. In Mid-City. And stuck with me. The name felt right to me. It felt like that vision of that sign stuck in my head. It was a sign for something I was entering into. It was something I wanted the album to feel like and look like. All the visuals to reflect that. 

The album includes the wonderful Spanish track "No Juegues." What inspired the bilingual shift?  

After I released Crawl Space and that song in Spanish, I got a lot of response from my listeners and fans. I realized there are a lot of Spanish-speaking people who listen to my music, which encouraged me to tap into that more. But it was more an organic thing. The past few years I've been more actively reading in Spanish, watching more stuff in Spanish. Revisiting the music that I grew up listening to and loved and influenced by that. 

I lived in Columbia until I was eight years old. And then my family moved to Canada. To Vancouver. And then when I was teenager we moved back to Columbia and then back to Canada. I basically grew up back and forth between Columbia and Canada. It was almost polar opposite places. But the cultures really complimented each other in how I absorbed them. I think once I opened up that, okay—let me actually try to write stuff in Spanish I'll try to release, it was really interesting and really freeing. Like anyone, you hit walls sometimes creatively. Once I was writing more in Spanish, it allowed me to step outside of myself a little bit. 

Is that something you want to tap into more?

I definitely want to tap in more. I want to be an international artist. I've always felt like that's just who I am. I want my artistry and career to reflect that, and to be able to resonate in different places around the world. I think it’s only natural for me to explore both Spanish and English sides of me, for sure. 

"When He's Done" seems to break that R&B pop mold you've created for yourself. 

That's good! I like to hear that. That was my personal favorite for a really long time. That was the first song I wrote for the album. I wrote that song right before I dropped Crawl Space. I thought about putting it on that album but it was too late and I wanted to take my time with it. That one feels special because it was the transition between Crawl Space and La Linda. I think to me, it’s the closest I've gotten to writing a classic song. Anyone who heard it, it's not about genre, it’s a song. It’s the one that I feel like I could sing that with just a guitar and it's still the song. That’s what I was going for. It’s also something a little different. My singing on it, it’s more powerhouse vocals. Which I don’t do a lot of but I love to sing that way. 

What came to mind was a modern take on "I Will Always Love You." My first thought was, "Wow, that girl knows what a broken heart feels like."

Oh, my god! I wrote it in kind of a crazy time. I made my album Crawl Space, I made with my ex-boyfriend. He was the other producer I worked with on it. We broke up halfway through making that album. And then we had to spend six months in the studio, producing it and recording it and finishing it after we broke up. 

I was experiencing being single for the first time in a really long time. Trying to find that companionship, that kind of love I was missing in different people—and being disappointed over and over again. We all go through that at certain points. So, it was kind of like coming from this place of being really jaded about love and falling for someone or opening yourself up to someone, and the inevitability of when you find yourself really into somebody who you know is not good for you and you’re like, "I know it’s going to end up in sh*t." When he's done, he's going to have his way. But it's also resigned in a way—but I'm still kind of going through the motions because I feel lonely. I feel like that’s a very relatable thing, the heartbreak not just of losing a relationship but the heartbreak of putting yourself out there and hoping for something or trying to find something. 

You're pretty upbeat about life in Los Angeles. Do you consider yourself to be an optimistic person? 

No! Absolutely not. I find myself being way more positive now in recent times. I think that's a result of me getting into a better place emotionally. Just being healthier all-around. Mentally and physically. I think it's been a journey to get to a place where I can draw from positivity in my work. For a really long time when I wrote music it was always coming from a place of sadness or despair or anger. It’s really hard when that's your nature to write music or to make any art inspired by just feeling good. I’m trying to make more of an effort. I don't think I'm an overly negative person. But I'm definitely not someone who you'd be like, "My friend Val, she's a very positive person!"

I think we do romanticize the suffering artist while forgetting you have to also live all those hours every day when you're not an artist. 

Totally! I think it’s also a negative thing because a lot of artists feel a weird pressure to self-sabotage. When you start feeling happen, for me, when I was in a really good place. Suddenly it's, "I'm not going to be able to write any music and I need to f**k up my life right now. I'm done!" That’s a horrible thing. I think a lot of people feel that pressure creatively. Sometimes it’s an internalized thing, but a lot of the time it’s what you’ve absorbed from the outside because it is such a glamourized thing. The suffering artist. Pain is art. Yes, that's true, but there's so much amazing music that’s come from people being positive. Redemption. People want to connect with a positive, empowering message. 

What does self-care look like for you?

I think it's surrounding yourself with people that contribute to your self-care. As you get older you realize how important the relationships you have around you are, in terms of your energy and mental health. I think one, it’s having people around me who are contributing to my well-being. And also for me, the number one thing, I need alone time. I'm the kind of person who recharges off being alone. And having space around me. So now that's a lot easier for me, not living in a place where anywhere I go you're in a crowd of people and you’re surrounded and there’s so much stimulus. I think the peace and quiet is really good in that sense.

And then taking care of my physical health too. When my body doesn’t feel good, that's when my mind is not good. Sleep is crucial! When I'm busy and stressed, my body doesn't process hunger. I live with my boyfriend and we were joking about it last night, when goes out of town, I lose weight. I rely on him for 90% of the time to feed me. When you're stressed and overwhelmed and overworked and stuff, something goes out the window. For me, nutrition is that thing. 

Do you feel like you were meant to move to Los Angeles? 

Yeah! I think so. I believe in fate to the extent that I think that every decision and action leads to the next. While I'm here because of every choice I've made before, it’s definitely not like there’s an alternate reality where I’m not a musician and living somewhere else. I do think everything worked in a way where everything felt like it had a purpose. The purpose was my own personal and creative growth. The finished product of the album.

You think about things that at the time felt terrible. How could this happen? I'm so upset about this! And then you realize that if that hadn't happened, I wouldn't have ended up here. It's important to think about those things because sometimes you can dwell on negative experiences. When you follow the path and you realize those things lead to good things—I guess I am positive! 

After claiming the genre "mermaid music" during your first alum, how do you feel about mystical beings now?  

I wanted to distance myself from that, but then the album cover of La Linda ended up being literally the most mermaid thing that could have happened. That term—when I first made my Facebook page, there's the genre section and I didn't know what to say, so I said "mermaid music." When I started making music, I was using vocals to make these soundscapes. So, there was a lot of layered and looped vocals. Very ethereal. The siren song thing. That felt cute and kind of funny and natural.

As my sound has evolved and what I want to do musically has changed, I felt like it didn’t really resonate. At the same time, what is mermaid music? It's not anything, really. I like the idea of mermaids. It's always been super appealing to me. The concept of a fantastical creature whose voice can draw in people and cast this spell. There's so much power in the voice and the mystique. That always resonated with me. When I saw that album cover I knew I had to be a mermaid. 

Alejandra Guzman On Her 30+ Year Career, Live Album At The Roxy And Writing Hits | Up Close And Personal

A girl looks at a photograph of Ewan McGregor who played Renton in the film 'Trainspotting' before the Private view for ?Look At Me - A Retrospective?

Photo of Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting

 

Photo: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

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How The 'Trainspotting' Soundtrack Turned A Dispatch From The Fringes Into A Cult Classic

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Twenty-five years after 'Trainspotting' first thrilled and scandalized moviegoers, the film's soundtrack remains an iconic collision of Britpop, rock and dance music
Jack Tregoning
GRAMMYs
Feb 28, 2021 - 3:43 pm

From its opening shot, Trainspotting is a movie in motion. As sneakers hit the sidewalk of Princes Street in Edinburgh, Scotland, we hear the raucous drumbeat of Iggy Pop's 1977 barnstormer "Lust For Life." Renton—played by Ewan McGregor—and Spud—by Ewen Bremner—sprint away from two security guards, their shoplifting spoils flying out of their pockets. 

"Choose life," Renton's narration begins, introducing an instantly classic monologue about the emptiness of middle-class aspirations. The action then zips to a soccer match that introduces Renton's ragtag mates: Spud, Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), Begbie (Robert Carlyle) and Tommy (Kevin McKidd). The scene is all propulsion and attitude, with Iggy Pop dropping the match on the trail of fuel. In just 60 exhilarating seconds, Trainspotting tells us precisely what it's going to be.

Trainspotting burst into U.K. cinemas in February 1996, followed immediately by a debate on whether its fizzing depiction of junkie life glorified drug use. Audiences staggered out, scandalized and delighted in equal measure by "The Worst Toilet In Scotland," Spud's soiled sheets and a ceiling-crawling baby. By the time it opened in the US in May, the movie was already a critical and box office hit at home. Its credentials were undeniable, including a compelling young cast led by newcomer McGregor, a visually daring director in Danny Boyle and a script adapted from Irvine Welsh's cult book of the same name. 

In a year dominated by slick Hollywood blockbusters like Independence Day, Twister and Mission: Impossible, Trainspotting was the scrappy, no-kids-allowed outsider that could. One of the movie's most significant talking points, and a key reason for its enduring legacy, was its use of "needle drops" in lieu of a traditional composerly film score. The soundtrack reaches back to the '70s and '80s, while also showcasing of-the-moment Britpop and dance music. The music of Trainspotting endures because it's intrinsic to the movie, with each song meant to elevate a particular scene or moment. 

Read: How 1995 Became The Year Dance Music Albums Came Of Age

Welsh's 1993 novel frames Renton's misadventures as a heroin addict against the dismal backdrop of Leith, just north of Edinburgh's city center. Trainspotting was first adapted as a stage play, with Ewen Bremner (perfectly cast as Spud in the movie) playing Renton. Before long, the movie offers rolled in. "There was loads of interest," Welsh told Vice in 2016. "Everybody seemed to want to make a film of Trainspotting."

Most directors wanted to ground the adaptation in social realism, but Welsh knew Trainspotting needed a wilder take. In 1994, a promising young director called Danny Boyle had made his feature debut with the pitch-black comedy Shallow Grave, starring Ewan McGregor. Impressed by the movie's visual flair, Welsh gave Boyle the keys to Trainspotting. 

The making of the movie was a thrill for all involved. Fresh from writing Shallow Grave, screenwriter John Hodge relished the opportunity to adapt Welsh's book for the screen. (Hodge was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 1997 Academy Awards - the movie's only Oscar nod.) Before filming, Boyle sent his actors to spend time with Calton Athletic, a real-life recovery group for addicts. The shoot began in June 1995 and lasted 35 days (a step up from the 30 allocated for Shallow Grave), with Glasgow mostly standing in for Edinburgh. 

Alongside cinematographer Brian Tufano, Boyle brought a bold, kinetic style to every shot. "We'd set out to make as pleasurable a film as possible about subject matter that is almost unwatchable," Boyle told HiBrow in 2018. 

While Shallow Grave gave an early glimpse of Boyle's tastes, including his fondness for electronic duo Leftfield, the music in Trainspotting demanded a bigger role. Welsh's book is peppered with references to The Smiths, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and David Bowie, so the call went out to a select list of musical icons. Bowie was a no, but others who'd loved the novel happily offered up their music to the project. 

Welsh and Boyle were both clued-in to acid house and rave culture (represented on the soundtrack by the likes of Underworld, Leftfield and John Digweed and Nick Muir's Bedrock project), but it was the director's idea to bring in the likes of Blur and Pulp. That decision was a "masterstroke", Welsh told Vice, because "Britpop was kind of the last strand of British youth culture, and it helped position the film as being the last movie of British youth culture."

Several of the best scenes in Trainspotting are soundtracked by songs made before 1990. Following "Lust For Life", the sleazy strut of Iggy Pop's 1977 track "Nightclubbing" lurks behind a sequence of Renton's relapse into heroin. (Both songs were co-written by David Bowie, giving him an honorary spot on the soundtrack.) New Order's 1981 song "Temptation" is a motif for Renton's taboo relationship with high schooler Diane (Kelly Macdonald in her first film role), while Heaven 17's 1983 pop hit "Temptation" plays at the club where they first meet. 

Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" lands the hardest punch. In a dazzling sequence, Renton visits his dealer Mother Superior (Peter Mullan) for a hit of heroin. As Renton's body sinks almost romantically into the floor, we hear Lou Reed softly singing about a perfect day drinking sangria in the park. The romance ends there. Knowing an overdose on sight, Mother Superior drags his sort-of friend to the street, then heaves him into a taxi, tucking the fare in his shirt pocket. (In a brilliant small detail, we see an ambulance rush past, headed for someone else.) 

"Perfect Day" keeps on at its languid pace as Renton is ejected at the hospital, hauled onto a stretcher and revived by a nurse with a needle to his arm. "You're going to reap just what you sow," Lou Reed sings as Renton gasps wildly for air. 

Boyle pushed for Britpop on the soundtrack, but he didn't want obvious hits. Britpop, a genre coined in the '90s to describe a new wave of British bands influenced by everything from the Beatles to the late '80s "Madchester" scene, was at its peak during the Trainspotting shoot in the summer of 1995. Pulp had just released the Britpop anthem "Common People," Elastica and Supergrass were flying high from their debut albums, and genre superstars Oasis and Blur were locked in a media-fueled battle for chart supremacy. 

In the heat of all that hype, Boyle reached back to 1991 and took "Sing" from Blur's debut album, Leisure. The song's stirring piano melody picks up after the "Nightclubbing" sequence, as Renton and his fellow addicts hit a harrowing rock bottom. Later, when Begbie busts in on Renton's new life in London, Pulp's "Mile End" underlines the mood of big city ennui. Along with contributions from Elastica and Blur frontman Damon Albarn, Trainspotting draws on just enough Britpop to keep its cool. 

If Trainspotting has a signature song, it's Underworld's "Born Slippy .NUXX". The duo of Rick Smith and Karl Hyde already had three albums behind them when Boyle reached out to use their 1995 B-side in his movie's climax. The duo was wary—as Smith later put it to Noisey, their music was often sought out to accompany "a scene of mayhem"—but Boyle convinced them with a snippet of the film. Underworld also contributed the propulsive "Dark & Long" to the indelible scene of Renton detoxing inside his childhood bedroom. After Trainspotting, "Born Slippy .NUXX" became the defining song of Underworld's career and a constant euphoric peak in their live sets. 

Just as Trainspotting caught the Britpop zeitgeist, it also immortalized a high point for dance music. A rush of trailblazing dance albums came out in 1995, including Leftfield's Leftism, The Chemical Brothers' Exit Planet Dust and Goldie's Timeless. In a time of rave culture colliding with chart hits, the movie finds room for both the dark electronics of Leftfield's "A Final Hit" and the goofy Eurodance of Ice MC's "Think About The Way". 

In one scene, Renton sits grinning between the speakers at a London nightclub that's going off to Bedrock and KYO's 1993 classic "For What You Dream Of." "Diane was right," he narrates, recalling a conversation from before he left Edinburgh. "The world is changing, music is changing, drugs are changing, even men and women are changing." For the briefest moment, we see the thrill of '90s dance music as it really was. 

The Trainspotting soundtrack album hit shelves in July of 1996. The cover played on the movie's iconic poster design, framing the characters in vivid orange. The soundtrack sold so well that a second volume followed in 1997, featuring other songs from the movie and a few that missed the cut. (The same year, the hugely popular Romeo + Juliet soundtrack also inspired a "Vol. 2.") 

Boyle continued to use music as a key character in his movies, following up Trainspotting with the madcap Americana of A Life Less Ordinary and the pop-meets-electronica of The Beach. After 20 years, Boyle got the gang back together for 2017's T2 Trainspotting. In contrast to the original's wall-to-wall needle drops, the sequel weaved a score by Underworld's Rick Smith around songs by High Contrast, Wolf Alice and Young Fathers. 

Many impressive, star-studded soundtracks followed in the wake of Trainspotting. What makes this one rare, though, is how deeply its unholy union of rock, Britpop and dance music belongs to the movie. Remove any needle drop from a scene in Trainspotting, however fleeting, and it'd lose something vital—that's how you know it's built to last.

How 1995 Became A Blockbuster Year For Movie Soundtracks

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PJ Harvey and John Parish perform at Primavera Sound Festival in 2016

Photo by Jordi Vidal/Redferns

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PJ Harvey's Lost Album: John Parish Discusses 1996 Gem 'Dance Hall At Louse Point'

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On the occasion of its recent reissue, we tracked down John Parish to talk about 'Dance Hall At Louse Point' and his earliest memories of meeting PJ Harvey as an ambitious teenager
Zach Schonfeld
GRAMMYs
Nov 10, 2020 - 10:19 am

PJ Harvey rarely looks back. The songwriter’s career has been defined by a restless sense of reinvention, each album cycle accompanied by a fresh persona—the blues roar of To Bring You My Love, or the glossy alt-rock romance of Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea—ready to be discarded at the next creative whim.

But 2020 has been an exception. Harvey has spent much of the year rolling out a vinyl reissue series of her back catalog, along with some accompanying demo albums. The latest vinyl reissue is something of an outlier: Dance Hall At Louse Point, Harvey’s abrasive 1996 collaboration with ex-bandmate John Parish. Harvey and Parish had first met in the late 1980s, when she joined his band Automatic Dlamini. In 1996, they combined Parish’s musical demos and Harvey’s lyrics on an album that would plunge the singer-songwriter into an avant-garde realm of disturbing monologues and banshee-wail vocals.

Credited to John Parish & Polly Jean Harvey, Dance Hall was largely overshadowed at the time by the immense success of To Bring You My Love. In retrospect, it’s an underrated gem and something of a lost album in Harvey’s catalog; as Harvey herself later acknowledged, "People don't even count that, yet that's the record I'm really proud of."

On the occasion of the album’s recent reissue, I tracked down John Parish to talk about the album’s unusual backstory and his earliest memories of meeting Harvey as an ambitious teenager. Since then, Parish has co-produced most of the singer’s solo albums, and in 2009, the pair reunited for a second collaborative record. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

At the time you made Dance Hall At Louse Point, you had already known Polly for a number of years. What was your first impression when you first met her in the '80s?

She was like 17 when I first met her. She was coming to see my band, Automatic Dlamini, whenever we played in her local area. We all got to chatting after a gig. A mutual friend introduced us, and then she gave me a couple of cassettes of some of her early songs she’d been writing. They were kind of like folk songs at that time, really. But her voice—it was already there. It was fully formed at that age.

I just thought, "That girl’s got a really good voice, I’m gonna see if she wants to join the band." So I just asked her. When she finished school, she came and joined the band and she played with us for the next three years, before she formed the first PJ Harvey trio.

Was there a moment when you first realized, "This person is extraordinarily talented, oh my God."

I mean, I obviously saw something that was really good there; otherwise I wouldn’t have asked her to join the band. You can’t possibly predict how somebody’s going to develop as an artist. I could see that she had the potential to be great. If I said, "Oh, I knew she was going to be a star"—obviously nobody can know those kinds of things.

Do you have any favorite memories of working with Polly in Automatic Dlamini?

She came in at a point when the original lineup was kind of falling apart. I was rebuilding a lineup, and she was an absolutely fundamental part of that. She’s always had an old head on young shoulders. She was somebody that you could talk to and discuss pretty serious issues. As a teenager, she was very serious. And was quite capable of being able to offer good advice. We started relying on each other.

Was she nervous performing onstage with the band when she first joined?

The first couple of shows, yeah, really nervous. As you would be. But no, she got used to it pretty fast.

Tell me about the origin story for Dance Hall At Louse Point. My understanding is that you wrote those songs while on tour with Polly for To Bring You My Love?

That’s semi-right. It was Polly’s idea. It was after Rid Of Me, before she had started To Bring You My Love. I was teaching a performing arts course at a local college. I’d written some music for a theater production, and Polly came along to see it. She absolutely loved the music, and said afterwards, "Would you write me some music in that kind of vein? That I could try writing words to?" I said, "OK, that would be great."

That’s how we had the idea for the album. I was writing the music for Dance Hall At Louse Point at the same time she was writing the music for To Bring You My Love. I then became involved with [To Bring You My Love], which was obviously a big record. And it involved a big tour as well. Took 18 months of our time. While we were on tour for To Bring You My Love, that’s when Polly wrote all the words. She already had a cassette of the music for the Dance Hall record, which she carried around with her on the tour and then wrote lyrics in different cities. Which is why those cities are referenced on the album sleeve.

Were you hearing her lyrics while she was writing them? Or were you both working in your own separate worlds?

She would sort of drop a cassette into my hotel room and say, "I've got some lyrics for this song." I'd hear them as they were coming in. It was always kind of, "Here you go, here's the lyrics." And it would always be completely done. It was very exciting.

I was reading some old interviews with Polly. There’s one where she describes that record as being a huge turning point for her. What do you think she meant by that?

It’s always difficult to talk about how that is for somebody else. My take on that is—and I know this from myself when I’m writing in collaboration with somebody else—it’s a certain freedom you have that you don’t give yourself if you're writing entirely individually, because you have the weight of the whole thing. When you can share the weight, it eases you up to do things you might be nervous about doing yourself, because you’re not sure whether you’ve gone off a stupid tangent and you’re not seeing it.

You can try those things that might seem kind of wayward. And you have another person that you rely on say, "Oh yeah, that’s great. Push it a bit further." Like I said before, she approaches most things very seriously. Writing particularly so. So I think it probably enabled her to be a bit more wayward than she might have been. When I first heard her vocal idea for "Taut," I mean—the entire delivery of the song was kind of extreme.

Which song are you referring to?

I’m referring to "Taut." Which is quite an extreme performance. A lot of the songs, I would give her a title. So I gave her the title "Taut." She didn’t have to use it if she didn’t want to. Some of the titles she used; some she didn’t. But I think it was also quite freeing to suddenly have a word or a line and say, "What are you gonna come up with for that?"

I’m assuming Polly thinks the same. She might have a totally different reason for saying that was a turning point. It could also be that, up until that point, the lyrics she had been writing—you know, Rid Of Me and Dry—were very personal lyrics. Or they could be read in a personal way, couldn’t they? Louse Point was very much stories and scenarios. You weren’t imagining that Polly was talking about herself in the bulk of those songs.

The vocal performance on "City Of No Sun" is also quite extreme and very jarring. Were you taken aback by her approach to singing this material?

I was a bit surprised. In a good way. I thought it was really exciting. I remember the performance of "City Of No Sun" when we were in the studio. She said, "OK, I’ll record the quiet bits first, then I’ll do the loud bits." So she had the engineer set the levels, doing the quiet bits. It’s quite strange timing in that song, to get everything to line up. She hit the chorus; she had two or three go’s and she kept getting it wrong.

At one point, she got it wrong again and she was so annoyed that she just went straight into the loud bit anyway. We had the mic set to be recording this really quiet vocal, so all the needles shot way into the red. It was on tape, which can really compress those kinds of things.

Is that the performance that is actually on the record? You can hear how it sounds a bit distorted.

Yeah. Because it’s absolutely pushing everything. She didn't mean to record it like that, but it just sounded so great. Of course we kept it.

Whose idea was it to cover "Is That All There Is?" by Peggy Lee?

It was initially done because they needed it for this film [Basquiat]. We really liked the way it came out, so we thought, "Oh, it kind of fits on the record." The recording that’s on the album is actually the first time we’d ever played that song. There were no rehearsals. We didn’t really know what we were going to do. Mick Harvey played the organ, I played drums, and Polly sang.

Obviously, most of her albums are credited to PJ Harvey. On this album, she's Polly Jean Harvey. What do you think is the significance of her changing her billing?

That was absolutely her call. I think she was quite protective of me. She very much said, "I want it to be called John Parish and Polly Jean Harvey, not the other way around." It’s difficult, isn’t it, if you’re an established artist and you suddenly work with someone who’s unknown, or de facto unknown. It’s like, "Oh, PJ Harvey and some bloke" kind of thing. I think she was trying to find the best way of making people realize that it wasn’t another PJ Harvey album. I know that later on, when we did the second collaboration, it was PJ Harvey and John Parish. It in some ways made more sense, but you’re never quite sure how you should go about those things when you’re doing them.

Some articles I’ve read state that the record label, Island, was uncomfortable with the album and believed it to be "commercial suicide." Is there any truth to that?

I’m sure there were people at Island who were a little bit unnerved by it. And by the fact that it was coming out not as a PJ Harvey record, but under a different name, when To Bring You My Love had just been such a relatively commercial success for PJ Harvey. Probably somebody said it was commercial suicide. If they really thought that, I doubt they would have put it out. I think they didn’t really know what it was.

I have to give quite a lot of credit to Polly’s manager, Paul McGuinness. I think if he hadn’t been behind it, perhaps Island Records wouldn’t have gone for it. But Paul heard it and he was like, "This is a really good record." Obviously he had a lot of clout and a lot of credibility with Island.

During this period, Polly was also becoming successful very quickly. Perhaps she was overwhelmed by the expectations from the record label or the degree of media scrutiny. Do you think those factors contributed to her desire to separate herself from the PJ Harvey that people knew?

You’d probably have to ask her. My take would be that it’s not quite as thought-through as that. She doesn’t like to repeat herself. The last thing she would have wanted to do at that time would have been To Bring You My Love 2. Her gut reaction is to try and do something different each time. Which is why I think she’s had such a long, successful career. I think there was a lot of pressure after the first album, Dry—the record company didn’t like Rid Of Me. They didn’t want to have this Steve Albini-recorded, very hard-hitting album. They were hoping for something more commercial, like I would have said Dry was.

If you are able to reinvent yourself each time—which, obviously a lot of artists just don’t have that facility—if you can, it sets you up for a much longer, more interesting career.

The album title refers to a painting. How did the title present itself to you or to Polly?

I was, and I still am, a very big fan of the painting Rosy-Fingered Dawn At Louse Point by [William] de Kooning. I told you I was giving Polly some of the songs I gave her with titles. One of them, which she ended up not writing any lyrics to—the title track from the album—is an instrumental. That was just a title I gave it. There was something about a place called "Louse Point" that sounded sort of desolate and rather unappealing, and I just thought a dance hall—I just liked the atmosphere that the title [suggested].

How would you describe this album’s long-term legacy in Polly’s career? Do you think it’s overdue for more attention?

I mean, I know it’s seemed like there’s a hardcore group of fans that like it very much. In the U.K. and Europe, there were a lot of people [who] liked it pretty much straight away. Perhaps in America it took a little bit longer to find its home. Obviously we never came over, played any shows, did anything in the U.S. at the time of its release. A lot of people talk to me about it 23, 24 years after its release and say they love it very much. I guess it has its fans for sure.

Once this reissue campaign is over, do you think we can expect a new album from Polly next year?

Umm… I don’t know. I can’t really answer that.

Are there any more previously unreleased demos, like the Dry demos, that fans can look forward to as part of this reissue campaign?

Nearly all the albums will come with accompanying demos. Probably the only ones that won’t are our two collaborative albums—the demos would all be instrumental versions of the album, because that’s how we went about it.

What can you tell me about the demos for Is This Desire?

Well, there’s a demo version of "The Garden," which I really, really love. Had it been down to me, I would have said "Put the demo version on the album" when the record came out. Because I just think it’s one of Polly’s greatest demos. Generally, I like the demos for Is This Desire? a lot.

And the b-sides from that record as well—"Sweeter Than Anything," "Nina in Ecstasy." I think there are some really extraordinary songs that didn’t make it onto the proper album.

You and me both. I think "Nina In Ecstasy" should have been on the record. That was my favorite track of the whole set of demos. So I was very disappointed that that didn't make it onto the album.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought that track should have been on there. Will those b-sides be included with the reissue package?

Not the initial reissue package, because it’s literally the album plus demos of the album. I might be wrong, but I think there might be some kind of b-sides and rarities thing to come out as another package at some point down the line.

Will you also be reissuing the more recent albums, like Let England Shake and The Hope Six Demolition Project?

I think Hope Six is still available anyway. So I don’t think there’s any point in reissuing that. But I think everything that was unavailable is being made available.

Has Polly herself been very involved in preparing these reissues and overseeing everything?

No, I think she’s delegated to people like me or Head. And she’s delegated the artwork; it’s all the people that did it originally who are working on it again. She’s very good at [delegating].

I’ve always gotten the sense she doesn’t like to dwell on her past work. She’s more interested in doing something new.

As all creative artists should be, I think.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, The Honorable Music Lover

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