[ad_1]
“Your eyes can wander…” reads the description of Lilien Rosarian’s recent album, Every Flower in My Garden (2022). Together with the eyes, nose and all the other sense organs, we immerse ourselves in an overgrown “colony”, abundant with flora and tactile cues.
The day begins, the panoramic sun greets us like an old friend and reminds us again of our corporeality. Such is the opening track, “I’m wide awake!”, where a wave of visceral noise begins the listener’s journey.
The moment creates a reminder, a reminder that everything we think of as “natural” and somehow separate is actually an extension of ourselves. We, like the environment around us, are a self-regulating system prone to malfunction, fed by the world around us.
The garden in which we move is both a soundscape and a tactile representation, a space that is inseparable from the listener’s memories, experiences and fears.
The subjectivity of these emotions leads to a certain inadequacy when describing Lilien’s work, as her music is defined by genre-smooth distortion of binaries; digital and natural, visceral and meditative. The worlds collide, forming a new space in which to find refuge.
Specifically, each flower is based on a (post)pandemic plane of existence, when our time was and is increasingly divided between cyberspace and places of beauty once neglected. The sight of daffodils, the scent of lavender or the gentle movement of grass form different components of hyperreality. Yet Lilien’s music is a reminder that these two ecosystems are more alike than not; worlds within worlds existing in a perpetual state of flux.
I spoke with Lilien to better understand how the natural world has inspired her music. Although ambient music is no stranger to environmental aesthetics, both a day in bel bruit (2019) and every flower in my garden offer something new – a glossy fusion of alternate worlds stitched together through lost loops, broken tapes and reminiscing thoughts .
First, thank you for talking to MUSE. I’ll start with a simple question: what’s been inspiring you creatively lately?
Musically, I have a few that come to mind: Alexander Schubert and especially his album Plays Sinebag (2011), which is such a playful collage of sounds that creates a mood that I often try to inhabit.
The other is /f, one of my favorite artists who makes some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard, even though it’s so ethereal and complicated at times. Especially the way he seems to be able to make percussion out of almost anything and mix it with everything else is something I really adore.
I also recently played The Witness (2016), a puzzle game that I really love. There are frequent moments when you realize that almost every aspect of your surroundings is intentional, but it never really prompts you to do anything, or even seems to care if you noticed or not. I feel it more like a museum than a game. I think a lot of my favorite music is like a puzzle, something that will challenge you to figure it out until you can internalize its patterns – that’s something I think about a lot with my music.
I definitely noticed that dynamic in the fluidity of your music both sonically and thematically. Yet there are basic concepts that frame the music.
The most important aspect is that it gives me something to work towards. The themes are there because it helps give it more intention for its existence. I think I’ve preferred releasing albums so far because it’s very satisfying to put all my effort into one whole thing, so it ended up being a more meaningful project for me.
And how would you describe your music? Are the categories helpful when you do?
The categories/genres are certainly useful to some extent, though perhaps not as relevant while I’m making music. The main thing is to have an idea of what I want to do and if the sounds fit the environment I’m aiming for.
As far as genres go, I really just wanted to make sure the collage aspect was consistent and wasn’t worried about fitting in anything else. I think tape experimentation + “bug” ambient are definitely consistent throughout my music and I’m happy to embrace it, but they’re not categories I’m really attached to, mostly just because I like the sounds a lot!
One notable characteristic of your music is how personal it sounds despite the lack of vocals other than snippets of dialogue. To what extent is your music an exercise in abstract thought?
This reminds me of something I’ve been trying to do lately, specifically on my last album, to make elements more “directly” obscured. I wanted the samples to feel cut and pasted so it sounded more tangible. There’s rarely any slow fade in/out, so many of the changes are more easily perceived, and I often eschew reverb, washed-out parts in favor of more ticklish close-up sounds. I feel like it helps give the feeling of clarity, like you don’t have to squint anymore.
This is something I also tried to do in the cover, which is a collage of edited photos. The pixelated artwork wasn’t really done because I was interested in making pixel art, but rather because I found that scaling down these really blurry screenshots would force me to fill in the blanks and see new things in them, which I liked it a lot. I hope a similar experience occurs in music.
I definitely think each flower’s artwork does a great job of encapsulating your sound. Thinking about it, it seems that between the natural environment and its convergence with cyberspace, the human subject(s) of your music potentially disrupts their synthesis. Yet a day in bel bruit ends with the resurgence of human voices promising “everything will be alright.” Does the human subject of your music disrupt the soundscapes you create, or do they play a more harmonious role?
I’d like to think it’s harmonious, though I suppose it’s not up to me whether I’ve done it successfully or not. For bel bruit I tried to ensure that all the voices didn’t happen in the environment, but through a radio broadcast, as the idea was that you’re basically alone the whole time – I intended the last song to be an outlier, as interpret it as happening in your mind while you sleep. For each flower, I didn’t really want any phrases/sentences to be too common. I was very drawn to chopping up phrases and letting them become rhythms, which made looping them work better.
I just really like the idea of having a lot of captured moments that seem like fragmented memories where the context is removed but the feeling is still there. There are people posing for a photo and realizing it’s a video, (a few) people giving tours of their home gardens, someone’s school project on how to tie their shoes, kids interviewing their friends during school.. .to name a few. It’s a satisfaction to me to put all these pieces together, even if their origins may be completely unrecognizable.
interesting This brings me to my next question. Do you think your music protects the natural world or reflects it?
I would say he is protective in the sense of taking care of nature and very friendly towards it. For each flower, I tried not to make it reflective in the sense that I didn’t want the concept (essentially a walk through a garden) to be so literal and instead feel like a heightened reality, noticing details you couldn’t see before. .. I don’t think I wanted it to feel particularly natural or unnatural, just something in between, within a kind of freer existence.
Nicely said. In conclusion, what can we expect from you in the future? Is making music financially sustainable or is it a side gig for now?
I’m trying to figure it out! I’d like to do something quite different, but I’m not sure what that will end up being. I learned a lot after making the first album (a day in bel bruit) and I’m actually very happy with how I progressed with the second one, the result ended up being much more than I intended it to be. For now, I’m just doing more experiments and seeing where it takes me.
Making music is definitely not financially sustainable for me, but I’m happy that anyone has supported my music at all so far, it’s so much more than I could have imagined. I’m not that concerned with supporting myself through music as I realize that realistically I’m likely to go with it as a whole pretty niche, but I’m fine with that!
Thank you again for taking the time to speak with MUSE!
Thank you for asking me to do this! I really appreciate it :) – Amy
Editor’s Note: This interview was conducted via direct message on Twitter. Lilien’s discography is available on streaming platforms including Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.
[ad_2]
Source link