NEW HEIGHTS WITH KELSEY LU
With the release of her debut full-length album Blood, LA-based artist Kelsey Lu has been amassing deservedly worshipful acclaim. Her music is layered and complex; the taught tension of finger-plucked strings contrasted with her soft, ethereal voice, the breathy, pitchy whispers blended with deep tonal notes. Kelsey Lu seems to become more unique and impactful with each iteration of her career as a musician, Astrophe speaks with her about her artistic evolution.
How is Blood different to the music you have made previously? Being your first full-length album was it a different process in terms of inception, writing, recording, production?
Well ‘Church’ was done mainly alone, I was by myself and that process was sort of the opposite of the majority of ‘Blood’. It was a different process, it was way more collaborative than ‘Church’ was and it took more time too; the recording process was different. ‘Church’ was recorded live and so I think in the time that it took me to record ‘Blood’ I was also kind of learning how to capture a certain level of emotion in a studio setting, that I hadn’t quite yet learned how to capture when I was recording ‘Church’. Which is part of the reason why I recorded it live, because I was trying to make studio songs, studio recorded music, and it just wasn’t translating in the way that a live experience was. So as an opening for people to hear my music, I wanted it to be in the most raw and honest way. Then for ‘Blood’, I wanted to have the same sort of emotive effect, a raw kind of feeling of emotion, but recorded in a studio. There were more people involved, I feel like there is a more lightness of being to it than there was for ‘Church’ too, and I think that came with the exposure, with more people and things coming out of different shells of self.
Do you find more people being part of the creative process that it’s harder in that way to connect emotionally?
No I think it’s just accessing a different part of my emotional self, actually I feel like it’s connecting me more to people in an accessible way because of collaborations and when collaborating with other people I’m accessing somebody else’s thoughts and feelings and emotions, and how they relate to me, and how those react and interact with one another. It just makes the spectrum broader, with more people to feel more included in the conversation.
‘Change’ seems to be a prominent theme in Blood, through the lyricism and the flow of the music and the changes which the notes seems to undergo throughout each song. Was change a considered theme for you in creating this album?
Yes, definitely, because as you go through life you’re changing and everyone is changing around you, and I think people are kind of afraid of change. For me, it’s something that I had to face pretty severely and intensely in a quick, kind of survivalist way, where I had to change my life like that, and learn how to adapt to my environment and to the changes that were happening. I think that a lot of people are afraid of it because of course naturally we want to be comfortable, and we don’t want to feel uneasy all the time, if at all. I think that if we sort of welcome those feelings more our levels of empathy change, our horizons are broadened. So with that thought in mind and thinking about the change of pace in the music, for me that’s speaking on wanting to actively pursue that and help other people broaden their sense of change. To not be so caught in the ‘everything has to be the same’, or expecting things to just stay completely consistent. Which is funny because I’m a Taurus and I love consistency!
(laughing) So even more embracing that sense of change as a conscious effort!
(laughing) Yeah.
It’s interesting because you can hear it not just in the lyrics but it the musical notes too, in the instrumentals, change is a theme not just in the words but in the changes that the notes undergo. Was that a conscious thing, or does that just come naturally as you are embracing that theme of change?
I think it comes naturally but it’s also something that I think about too, I think about it when I’m also taking in things that inspire me and how varied those things are. Even when it comes to things like, when people ask me “who are your favourite artists?” or “what are those things that you really like?” and I kind of draw a blank, because for a lot of what I retain is based just off a natural feeling, and it changes so frequently to be able to say oh it’s this and that is kind of hard for me. But I think they both play into one another, maybe at one point if you’re thinking about it, it just naturally becomes so.
When you listen to your own music, how do you hear it? Do you take a break between recording and listening to it so you can hear it with a “clean ear”, or do you have another technique to mediate that over-familiarity with your own work?
When I was recording music, and when I was making it in the mixing process and everything, I didn’t listen to it that much. I was not afraid of it, but kind of avoiding it? I think I was afraid of getting… I don’t want to say bored, but that it would sort of lose it’s magic in a way, it’s sacredness. It’s that, but it’s also wanting to move forward and keep going and not get stuck, and an obsession with that, with what’s happening. It’s funny because I was with a friend of mine who is also a musician who I really admire and I love their music, and we were talking about it and they were like “I listen to myself all the time, I’m always listening to it and making notes”. So everyone has their own, different process. But after that, I started doing it and was like “oh wow”, there were some things in there that I probably wouldn’t have picked up on if I wasn’t listening to it over and over again, that I could modify. So for me, my way of processing my music is still evolving. With ‘Church’, I didn’t listen to it, when it came out I was like “okay, that exists, that’s there”. But I never listened to it after I put it out. And it was such an in-the-moment thing that it wasn’t like I was listening to different mixes, I was listening but it was just a different process because it was live, so there’s not really much you can do, and I didn’t really want to do a lot to it. Then I just kind of let it be. But this process [recording ‘Blood’] was way different, especially when I started sequencing it, I was really listening to the words, I was seeing colours, I was comparing the colours to one another, matching them up, making colour charts and lyrical charts and matching them up and really creating a story. It was way more of a kind of theatrical experience in the break down of the record for me.
What kind of music or other art influenced you as a child and as a teenager? Have your influences changed?
I think I was really influenced by... jazz was around a lot as I was growing up, my Dad listened to jazz all the time because he was a jazz musician before I was conceived. So my Mom would go watch him play at the jazz clubs. He’s a portrait artist as well and his studio was at the house, so he’d be home all the time in his studio, blasting jazz, and I’d be there with my little easel dancing to funk or Coltrane or like Toto ‘Africa’. Then on my Mom’s side, she was more into pop music - popular for her I guess. But I feel like one of the first musicians that she introduced me to when I was really little that made me feel really uncomfortable was Joni Mitchell. We were at a yard sale and she found the cd ‘Blue’, and I’d never seen her so excited about getting a cd from a yard sale - and she would go to yard sales a lot, she would get a lot of cds and tapes, but when she found that one… she would play it non stop. I remember when she first put it on and I was like “what is this?”. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t understand. I found later that I didn’t like it but I couldn’t stop listening to it. Her voice was unlike any other voice I’d heard before, and her storytelling I could visualise it and I was seeing it for myself. She was such a storyteller and had such visual language. That just stuck with me and I loved listening to her, and she became one of my favourite artists to listen to. She’s an artist that I feel like has influenced me over time, and then hearing Etta James was also something - I think when I was around nine, and I heard ‘At Last’ for the first time, and I got body chills. I was like “how can somebody’s voice do that to you?” - I want to make people feel that way. Etta James was kind of the reason I started singing, because I heard that, and I wanted to be able to do that. Then you have your pop icons like Mariah Carey and Whitney Housten, of course, all the ladies. One thing that I never forgot when I was at my grandparent’s one time. They had cable, we never had cable so whenever we went over there it was like “cable time!”. I was in a room by myself and flipped onto MTV, and there was the Marilyn Manson video playing, the one where he is alone and tucked, and I was like “whoa”.
I never forgot that image, ever. When I tried to listen to his music, my parents were like “no way”, so he was someone that I was so intrigued by, even though I couldn’t listen to his music, I was just intrigued by his aesthetic of being, how it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I was always interested in it, I think just that imagery and his imagery is something that stuck in my mind forever. Being able to break away from a lot of things and access a broader range of people through your individuality and just you being, fucking iconic.
Where do you feel most comfortable and creative? Do you have a special place you go to write lyrics or music?
I feel like it’s more of a mental space, because I move around so much, it’s hard to always have a consistent place to write. But I love writing at home, in my bed, in nature, I love being in nature and it’s a place that I trust more than anything else, and that provides so much life for me and for all of us. So if I can be in that and go to that, then that’s where I feel the best, and most honest and true to myself. There’s a place I once went to in upstate New York, in this cabin for ten days, and when I think back on places that I’ve been, where I’ve written, where I’ve felt the truest to myself, were places that are in nature where I’m isolated and by myself. The other times it could just be, like for ‘Blood’, it could be in studio, with one or two other people, with someone that I trust, and that I have built a relationship with, where I feel that I can be open and vulnerable like that and they’re not taking advantage of it.
Do you have a particular direction you see yourself taking your music, or is it something that evolves naturally as you create, not something within your conscious control?
I think about things that I’d like to do, the spectrum is pretty broad. I’d like to do a dance album, I think it would be really fun, just like hyper fucking dance. I want to do collaborations with more international artists, I really want to do more scoring, for film music. I think my music is so cinematic and visual, like this last thing that I did with Andrew Thomas Wang for VIVID, was one of my favourite collaborations I’ve ever done. It’s something that comes so naturally to me, it’s like breathing. I want to do more things like that.
Last time we spoke to you, you told us about a collaboration with an illustrator friend working on an Anime clip for ‘Blood’. What was that like?
It was so good, Dachi Cole, the artist, is one of my favourite human beings ever, I love her so much. We’ve known each other for years now and it’s just been really beautiful experiencing each other’s flowering, and blossoming of being and talents, to be able to share in that together is really special. And they are so talented, and have so many different talents too. But yeah it was such an easy process too - it was just great - it was smooth, I don’t want to say easy, but smooth.
Any there any special projects or shows lined up that you are particularly excited about?
Yes, actually. There’s this show that I’m doing - I’m kind of hesitant saying too much about it because I’m still finding out things about exactly what is going on - but I’m going to be performing in Boston for this installation project, and I’m going to be performing in a hot air balloon! (laughter) Weeks before it came to me, I was literally talking about potential places that could be really cool to do something in, to play in, and I was like “you know, I’ve never been in a hot air balloon, I bet it would be so sick” and then they called me and were like “hey you want to do a show in a hot air balloon?”. So I somehow just like manifested that, (laughs), so that’s happening. I feel like there is such a visual aspect of the balloon itself, [the artist] does a lot of different things, and it’s his essence of art.
You can find more on Kelsey Lu here / Worlds by Elizabeth Milstead, Photos on film by Simone Taylor at Golden Age Cinema.
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