| Her Stems Spiral will seep through your pores and plant the image of a chaotic Utopia in your mind. Vocally expect everything from screamo to dark chanting as the music carries you through a swamp of colours, love, anxiety, disgust and longing. Shannon Lawlor who you might recognize from enigmatic Eyes Like Mirrors took a few minutes to do an interview with us. Give the album a listen, download, share and let us know what you think. It might not be everyone's taste, but it it definitely deserves a try. |
| Q: You have been working around the clock with ELM, how did HSS come to be? (Where did the inspiration or motivation come from?) A: Throughout my years of music making, I have always been involved in projects or bands with close friends where direction has normally been quite loosely approached - We've never really stuck to a code, or 'set-of-rules', or anything like that when writing, but musically, I did always feel that I was somewhat alone on a lot of my own personal influences. So around the middle of last year, I had so many ideas for a project that I wanted to focus on intently, which eventually spawned into Her Stems Spiral. The whole idea was change. I became quite fed up with music repeating itself (especially in SA), I felt I wanted to give something creative back. I was heavily influenced by genres like mathcore, screamo, post-rock and even some classical. Q: Was making the choice of whether or not to add lyrics to HSS hard to make? On a creative level you have always been able to convey emotion through music alone. A: At first, it scared me. I had never sang, or even written lyrics before, so the thought of trying to sing, or yell, or scream made me quite nervous. But after my first vocal tracking session, I mellowed into it a lot more. Luckily, it felt pretty natural. It worked. So it made me want to do more and more. I love to write, so that part was a little more familiar for me. I wrote about 50% of my lyrics in a dream-induced state; I would go to bed, and set an alarm to go off after 2 hours, every 2 hours, and scribble down the first thing that came to mind, for an entire week. That was rough, because a lot of the content was extremely ambiguous, or vague, so at the end of the day, I tried to craft all these stories from what I had written down, with the initial ideas of the song in mind too - which made for an interesting experience, to say the least. Q: Your song structures change often and unexpectedly, is there a method to the madness or is this something which comes to naturally? A: I wrote "Princess Poured Out The Pale Winter Moon" entirely in studio, on the spot, at each session with only the guitar tracks first in mind. This made it considerably hard, as I would have to quickly envision the structure of each song as I was going along. I would write a guitar part, expand on it, and pretty much just guess how many bars or phrases it needed to exceed. After all of the guitar was recorded, I started taking the skeleton tracks home, and thinking of new ideas to layer them with, as well as lyrics. This was a technique I wanted to experiment with; subliminal influence, and spontaneity, as opposed to well thought-out, planned writing. | Q: The EP is only available on-line would you ever consider printing copies? A: Unfortunately, the EP is only available online, for now. If anyone was interested in helping me get it out as a physical copy, I wouldn't hesitate to set that up. But the truth is, and is also the most obvious answer - I just don't have the funding from my own pocket to release it physically. I'd love to see David Ladmore's art printed onto one of my CDs physically, he's a British artist who generously let me use his work as cover art for the EP. Another possibility was a cassette release, I kind of like the idea of tapes wearing down, and turning weird music even weirder! But who knows, maybe I'll get the chance to release it on a VERY DIY standard; handmade covers, plastic sleeves, blank CDs etc Q: I personally feel that it's brave to make experimental music in South Africa, we have such a small audience. Do you hope to attract a few international listeners or will you be relying on our local crowds? A: With experimental music - I like to think that most people appreciate eclecticism, in some form at least. And if they don't, then it's probably safe to assume that they aren't really true to music. Locally, I would love to attract some kind of fan-base, which ultimately, would incentivize me to start turning this into a live show with a rotating cast of musicians. But I have to admit, so far, the international praise I've received from this release far exceeds what I have received locally. But I completely appreciate any feedback whatsoever. And of course, criticism is also welcome! Q: We are eager beavers, what's next in line for HSS? A: To be perfectly honest, I don't want to spill any beans just yet, as we’ve had somewhat of a murky history behind release let-downs. But what I can say is that I will be working on a split release with my good friend Matthew, who records lovely math-pop music as Humanimals (Coincidentally, he is also the drummer behind my EP). I also have plans for a full-length LP at some stage. But at this point, dates are still quite hazy. Thanks to anyone reading, and to anyone listening, and to Annabel for the interview! 
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