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Part 2

Can you talk about a breakthrough work, event or performance in your career? Why does it feel special to you?

When, why and how did you start working on it, what were some of the motivations and ideas behind it?

As mentioned before our initial collaborative series in 2018 was the launching pad for NYX - every performance felt like the start of something incredibly magical, and each collaboration brought a completely different energy for us to explore musically. Each one of these felt like a breakthrough, but my personal highlight was our work with Alicia Jane Turner and Dead Light at the Old Church in Stoke Newington.

This was the final part of the series, and the moment when I feel like everything that we had learned throughout the first three collaborations felt truly earthed and grounded in our voices and bodies. Alicia’s sound works (heavily rooted in layered distorted and looped violin), combined with our vocal arrangements and Ed & Anna (Dead Light)’s affected piano, bass and tape loops was honestly the most divine instrumentation I ever could have dreamed of. It felt like a pure cathartic release of noise in this divine sacred space - there were so many moments of soft whispers, breaths and light touches of strings and faraway voices, which would slowly build and build into these epic cinematic orgasms of sound.

Our amazing friend Vincent Moon filmed the entire show in one take, and there is actually a section where I look like I'm having a singing climax (and to be fair I pretty much was)! Haha! That’s a beautiful experience on our YouTube channel if you ever have a spare 50 minutes to hand. But that music is really rooted deep into my body and I really hope we get to record that whole piece properly at some point in the near future. We were intending to perform it again at Kings Place in October 2020, but alas, we all know the story.




There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you? What supports this ideal state of mind and what are distractions? Are there strategies to enter into this state more easily?



For me, an ideal state is having a clear structure laid in front of me to work from and expand into. I don’t respond well to nothingness or completely open briefs, I need a starting point - an image, poetry, some audio, a field recording, anything to start building upon. Having clear boundaries and deadlines and processes to feedback and work within help me to feel safe and open to explore. But those structures also require space and time to allow the capacity for things to NOT go so well - some mornings I wake up and I know it’s not the day to sit and write. It’s a fine balance between motivating myself and pushing through feelings of “oh I can’t do this”, with genuinely listening to what is real and kind inside - is this the moment to hop into bed and have a cry about things or is it the moment to just splash some water on your face and get on with it? I don’t know - it changes every day so I’m constantly just trying to tune in and see what’s best in each moment.




Music and sounds can heal, but they can also hurt. Do you personally have experiences with either or both of these? Where do you personally see the biggest need and potential for music as a tool for healing?



Music (in particular singing) has taught me so much about being present in my body - feeling powerful, hopeless, totally ecstatic, disgusted - the whole range of everything I could ever fathom can arise. I think everybody agrees now that when you create music and experience sound you are quite literally transforming the frequencies within and around you. And the deeper I get with this work, the more I am coming into awareness of the immense power music has to transmute energy through our subconscious and physical bodies.

Music making is healing on so many levels - from the collective unity of singing or playing together (reminding us that we are so much more than just a group of individuals), to the reconnection it can give us to nature and the heartbeat of the earth, to the actual physical transformation we feel in our bodies when we sing - all of that sexy oxytocin pulsing through our cells, the entrainment of our breath and pulses to the vibrations of the music - it is ALL there to be utilised by humans to heal themselves and ultimately the crazy world / beautiful planet we inhabit.  




There is a fine line between cultural exchange and appropriation. What are your thoughts on the limits of copying, using cultural signs and symbols and the cultural/social/gender specificity of art?



As vocalists we are working with music from our bodies - often stripping back the need for clear lyrics or literal meanings and just singing sounds that arise from the deeper parts of ourselves. Each singer stands in their own body and what arises is different for each individual, based upon where they have come from and what they have experienced, heard, seen, lived.

We have all grown up in different countries, have different musical and cultural traditions, have our own uniquely formed identities that we carry into the sound, and then we take these instruments and expand their capacity even further by utilising digital and acoustic manipulations. Even with the heavily political references and undertones of our latest collaborative album with Gazelle Twin - Deep England - our sound draws upon an ancient feeling of being incredibly human, and then asks how we can question that into the future. And this happens beyond the words or the melodic references.

The power of collective voice for me feels like that freedom of honouring the timbre and individuality of each vocal instrument and then holding them in a space where they can be heard and seen in true relationship with the other voices around them. 


Our sense of hearing shares intriguing connections to other senses. From your experience, what are some of the most inspiring overlaps between different senses - and what do they tell us about the way our senses work?



I think our music has a strong relationship with visualisation and imagery (both imagined and experienced through the eyes). The first project where we worked with film - a collaboration with Dan Tobin Smith titled Void - was a deep sonic exploration into the voices of crystals and precious stones from deep inside the core of the earth. Dan had created these magnified moving images of multicoloured stones and their cosmic imperfections, and I responded with a 15 minute revolving score. You can hear the fiery shatters of heat and crystal shattering in the higher frequencies of the voices and ASMR vocal closeups, along with deep throbbing ancient earth beat in the lower parts of the voice and the primordial chanting of the singers in full voice.

And I think all of our musical outputs have a visionary quality to them, even if they don’t have an accompanying video. They take you on quite a cinematic journey where you design your own mental imagery, or emotions arise in the subconscious as visual imaginings. For me, senses don’t seem to be separate anyway - I think they are all in full relationship with one another constantly, we just need to give ourselves loads of space to fully experience them all vibing out together ;) 




Art can be a purpose in its own right, but it can also directly feed back into everyday life, take on a social and political role and lead to more engagement. Can you describe your approach to art and being an artist?



For me, the ultimate currency of the modern world is not our time or our money but our awareness. My power is where I'm focusing my attention. And when we’re fully present in creating or experiencing art, especially in a collective context, it instantly forms a radical force that can really snap us out of living in a dull limbo state - suffering somewhere in between overthinking or just feeling numb. If we could really find a way for people to place their full energy and awareness into their work, regardless of what that is, it really seems like the whole world could be creating art together! Singing is such a passionate way to experience this, and I feel incredibly fortunate to be working with that in my life. 




What can music express about life and death which words alone may not?



I think music has always existed as a tool to access all facets of being human, and very much functions as a subconscious language that can help us process the mysterious extremities of existence. It has the power to evoke and transcend beyond the parts of us that we can’t quite comprehend (such as being born or our bodies passing into death), it can help us feel safer of an uncertain future or challenge us and awaken us to the reality of impermanence. I mean the only thing that we all really have in common is that eventually we’re all going to die right? May as well make some sweet, sweet music about it to celebrate each beautifully horrific moment we have in this reality ;)





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