Name: VENUS GRRRLS
Members: Grace Kelly, Grace Stubbings, Gabby Cooke, Hannah Barraclough, Eliza Lee
Nationality: British
Current release: VENUS GRRRLS's new single “Hex” is out via LAB.
Recommendations: Björk – Lionsong; Deep Listening - Pauline Oliveros

[Read our Pauline Oliveros interview]

If you enjoyed this VENUS GRRRLS interview and would like to keep up to date with the band and their music, visit their official homepage. They are also on Instagram, Facebook, twitter, and Soundcloud.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

A healthy mixture of both, depending on the context!

If I’m (GK, Singer) listening with my eyes open, I feel the music distorts my surroundings to have a more symbiotic relationship with what I’m listening to. For example, drawing up associations with certain places, people, and songs. When my eyes are closed, it really allows me to delve deeper into the layers and production within a song, and notice new motifs and embellishments that I hadn’t previously noticed.

It’s interesting you see shapes, as oftentimes I’d think of a really twinkly guitar line as having a more freeform, almost amorphous fashion, but a drum beat becoming quite square and block-like. Which makes sense seeing as drums are oftentimes the foundation of a track!

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience - can one train/learn being an artist?

A lot of our first steps were as simple as meeting other musicians. Going to music college and developing relationships with like minded individuals, who could also bring different perspectives in a multitude of fashions.

It’s inspiring meeting others who can share ideas you’d never have considered but wish you had, and that’s really just the basis of a band. Bouncing off of each other, developing, and compromising if needs be.

I would argue that anyone could learn to be an artist, it’s incredibly subjective, and oftentimes autobiographical. No one can challenge you on your own definition of art, find your own niche and run with it, the most important thing that defines you is your happiness and passion within your chosen area.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

I (GK, Singer) wasn’t brought up with much of the music I ended up submerging myself within, so indeed those years were incredibly defining for me.

I had such a raw, linear, and naive view of music at that time. It’s not drastically dissimilar to my view of it now, but I think it was less shaped, and immature. Back then I saw every lyric, word, and melody as an inherent vessel to how the artist may have been feeling at that exact point in time. I wanted to understand songs in the deepest of their forms, and how they related to the artist.

I was particularly taken with Stevie Nicks, as she is a fantastic example of an artist who writes incredibly autobiographically, and I’ve taken a lot of pages out of her book.

But now, as someone in their 20s, I can see music has wider parameters than I had previously realised. How trauma oftentimes can be processed at a later date, how it means lyrics can be written about a past experience through the lens of a future placement. How harmony, and melody aren’t always consistent with cohabiters such as theme and lyricism.

Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

Well as I mentioned previously I (GK) often write autobiographically, I find this to be the easiest way to construe myself lyrically. I draw upon my own personal relationships and experiences, but again from different points in time to construe a generalised tonality.

As a young person who is a cancer survivor, this will naturally now have an influence on the way I perceive. Even though I may not sit down to write a song about cancer, elements of it may bleed through without intention.

Politics also play a large part in our writing, as young women in the music industry. Times are changing, but there is much more work to do, and yes we’re angry! This too bleeds into the songs we write. Not every song we write is about feminism, but every song is somewhat feminist because it is something we live and breathe.

Paul Simon said “The way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you describe the sound you're looking for?

You go through stages of listening to your own music, constantly zooming in and out. Sometimes it’s forensic, perhaps we’re attempting to find the best balance of a mix, enjoying a little detail or trying to pinpoint something we want to change. Then there’s an overarching mood we want to achieve, which tends to evolve on its own a little.

At the moment we’re particularly inspired by the sounds of Seattle grunge and 90s alternative but we want to put our own stamp on it. We really just look for the sound that represents the idea best at the time and how we feel about that listening back will evolve over time too - as an artist you’re constantly relating to your own material in new and different ways.

Are you acting out certain roles or parts of your personality in your music which you couldn't or wouldn't in your daily life? If so, which are these? If not, what, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music?

I (Hannah, Bass) wouldn’t go as far as saying a ‘role’, however inevitably when writing and performing music it’s a vessel for emotional release. With that you certainly tend to wear a mask of confidence when you otherwise might not be so outgoing day to day, notably regarding speaking about the subjects we cover in our music.

Performance requires conviction and belief to back up our writing style which is almost exclusively upfront and honest, and it’s empowering to emanate that to our audience.

Music is a language, but like any language, it can lead to misunderstandings. In which way has your own work – or perhaps the work of artists you like or admire - been misunderstood? How do you deal with this?

Of course as we’ve already established music is incredibly subjective, people are within their right to perceive things in their own way, through their own eyes, and experiences. Artists are not omniscient beings and should always be open to learning.

I do think the artist has a degree of responsibility to consider other vessels of perception, and how you’re coming across. Albeit, they will never be able to have full autonomy of perception, it’s just an artist’s choice to be responsible for their words and actions in their own way.

One we personally get often is that we ‘hate men’. We don’t hate men, we’re just expressing our distaste for the patriarchy and real life experiences we’ve had with men as women, negative and positive. But, we cannot prevent that being the takeaway from our music for some listeners, it’s just the reality of lots of different ideologies within society that we are not in control of.

Making music, in the beginning, is often playful and about discovery. How do you retain a sense of playfulness as things become more professionalised and how do you still draw surprises from equipment, instruments, approaches and formats you may be very familiar with?  

It’s important to tap into your inner child, especially if your flow is affected when creating a piece of music.

Good ways of approaching this is to experiment creating sounds, whether that’s through distorting found sounds or using a novelty childhood toys such as a groan tube (which we experimented with on our last track). It’s always super fun to set up a variety of pedals or look and play an instrument in a different way such as bowing a guitar through a variety of pedals or plucking the insides of a piano.

Also, space is good, I (Grace, Synth) like going for a walk to clear my head and to see if any inspiration visits. Collaboration is important as someone else always has new ideas where to take a track and their own mark or input can drastically change a piece.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

All sounds are musical, even silence. If there is such a thing?

I (Grace, synth) think using a hydrophone for the first time and pitch shifting the recorded sounds, (which are in a frequency that the human ear can’t hear) was eye opening to me. It gave me a new perspective of life underwater and how human activity is affecting biodiversity by interfering via noise pollution which is disturbing the frequencies in which the creature communicate in.

Listening to a motorboat from an underwater perspective is dissonant.

There seems to be an increasing trend to capture music in numbers, from waveforms via recommendation algorithms up to deciphering the code of hit songs. What aspects of music do you feel can be captured through numbers, and which cannot?

Isn’t sound just translated into numbers and patterns? Reading music is mathematics; even genres such as noise and improvisation can be and are quantised.

I guess some sequenced or formulaic sound is more commercially enjoyable to the masses than others, hence why hit songs oftentimes follow a similar pattern. But that isn’t to say, that less ‘popular music’ cannot also be broken down into numbers or patterns.  

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

To put it bluntly, it’s part of our everyday life, job, career. Simply by factoring in the time amongst the chaos of life to write music, to work toward a passion and dream.

It’s also difficult to define a ‘deeper’ level, every individual has different ideas of what deep is to them, every individual has a capacity that is dissimilar to another. For us, it’s used as therapy, a means to cope, to survive; in combination with a career goal.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold from your point of view? What role do headphones play for you in this regard?

Silence, or stillness is an opportunity for reflection which I (Grace, Synth) think is really important. You learn in times of stillness. I think it’s important for myself to have silence, it lets my thoughts come together and allows me to process things.

Headphones are good if you’re overstimulated, you can either block out sound around you or listen to something calming (or whatever you’re in the mood for). I always love listening to ASMR through headphones, it helps me relax and fall sleep because I am focusing on sounds rather than thoughts.

I’m a massive fan of Pauline Oliveros ‘deep listening’. Through listening to ‘silence’ you become aware of the layers of sounds that you’re surrounded by - you become more present and grounded.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

To be honest, absolutely not. Whilst everything is different in physical action, such as the act of making coffee is somewhat different to playing guitar; they both can translate strong feelings to an observer.

I (GK, singer), have felt love, appreciation, and support when my partner has surprised me with a cup of coffee. I have simultaneously felt this when I listen to my favourite musicians and form a relationship with their lyrics and ideologies. This can be flipped round as the performer, or ‘barista’ also.

Sometimes the best support is making a great cup of tea, or performing for someone who really resonates with our music. Really, they’re not so different at all.

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values which don't appear to have any emotional connotation. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a seemingly counterintuitive way – and what, do you think, is happening here?

Lyricism and words aren’t always the only way to convey passion or emotion, noise can have emotion too.

4’33’’ by John Cage, is ‘nothing’, but you can still hear ‘something’, and having that space to observe, as Grace mentioned, can leave you with more room to have a truly visceral experience.

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

For humans to continue creation as a means of fulfilment and connection.