PopMatters interview (2014)

Helen Marnie might have made her name as the singer for the internationally acclaimed Ladytron, but in June 2013 she released a solo album, Crystal World, through Pledge Music. The album confounded expectation and quickly cultivated a passionate and devoted following, with many (including The VPME and Polari) giving it flawless reviews.

In contrast to her work in Ladytron work it's an album in which nature constantly pulses and throbs. In it Marnie undertakes a set of startlingly emotional journeys, drawing what some have described as "a map of the heart"—quite an achievement for such a pristine electro record.

I caught up with Helen to try and dig a little deeper into the record, in a conversation that took in everything from the Piscean gift for swimming to her striking choice of outfit for the video to "The Hunter".

In previous interviews you've talked about the state of transition you were in when you wrote the Crystal World. Did writing the album help to deal with that transition at all?

I think so, yes. In fact, I think writing the album helped me deal with quite a lot of things. It kind of sorted my head out a little and gave me focus and freedom to express myself. I guess I had a lot of ideas going round in my head at the time, and a lot of baggage too. It was the perfect release to write an album for myself.

You've mentioned in the past how the sea is a "particularly dominant and reoccurring" theme on the record. I wondered how the sea connected to this sense of transition for you?

When I think of the sea, I think of my childhood. I spent a lot of time by water, exploring and having fun. One side of my family hails from the east coast of Scotland, so that is the sea I am generally referring to. I relate to it, it was a big part of my life. I sometimes feel enclosed by cities, and so the sea is the getaway in my head. There was quite a lot on the horizon when I was writing, one thing being I was going to relocate back to Scotland, so it felt like anything was possible. I am a Pisces, I am a good swimmer, and when I write by water or the sea it feels like home.

Crystal World was greeted with very positive press. I was struck by how the record stretched the boundaries of where I expected it to go, emotionally. Is that just how it evolved?

It was an emotional time for me, and I knew that would be released into the record. It actually made me feel better knowing I had put it somewhere. That the emotion had a home once I let go. When I listen back it will always take me to a specific time, with vivid images and feelings.

In the Pledge promotional video for "Crystal World" you situate yourself very much amongst Reykjavik's scenery, and I wondered if there might have been a decision to reflect the natural environment more for that album?

I was in Reykjavik to record and I wanted to create a promo for the Pledge which was beautiful and also reflected where I was. It was natural for me to use Reykjavik landscapes and landmarks. I must admit though, this album has no connection with Reykjavik other than it was recorded there. All the writing was done before going to Iceland, bar half a song. Scotland is very much the country behind this album.

The video for "The Hunter" sees a real blend of the natural (the forest) with the synthetic (taking the form of a colourful catsuit). I wondered if this juxtaposition was part of making a certain statement?

I was doing quite a lot of running in "The Hunter" video, and so the catsuit was great for that. Not only did it look and feel amazing, but it also looked foreign to the setting, which I guess was deliberate. The designer, Rebecca Torres, made it especially for me so I am eternally grateful. I've always had a bit of a catsuit fetish. I feel good in them. I'm not really into exposing too much flesh, so this one was perfect for me. It was also really important for me to inject some colour into the video and what I was wearing. By doing a solo album I felt liberated, and I wanted that to come across in "The Hunter" video.

Which artists inspired the Crystal World? I thought I might have detected a touch of Kate Bush?

I'm never sure who inspires me when I write. Only later, when someone says it sounds like something or someone else, am I surprised. I'll take Kate Bush though. If it sounds like Kate Bush then it's a winner.

You use the synthesizer in much of your work. But what is it about the synthesizer that keeps drawing you to it?

I started out playing classical piano, and was introduced to synthesizers when Ladytron formed. The keyboard is what comes naturally to me, and synthesizers are able to create a lot of warmth and depth and dirt, so are extremely versatile. With Crystal World I wanted real piano on some of the tracks, I knew that from the beginning. On "Submariner" it is quite prevalent, along with "Gold".

There is a long British tradition of synthesizer music, from artists like David Bowie to The Human League. I wondered how much you consider yourself as part of a British tradition of synthpop music?

We were influenced by a lot of different music, not solely synthpop, but our sound was definitely electronic with the synth taking centre stage. In Liverpool at the time, we were quite different in terms of the music we were making, and having two female lead vocalists was also a change to the mainly male-fronted indie bands.

Do you have any future plans with Ladytron?

Right now we are all pursuing our own projects, however we plan to start getting songs together for a new Ladytron album later in the year...

6 March 2014

Source

Ladytron - Exit Festival, 2005

Format: MP3, 320 kbps CBR

Track listing:
1. Evil
2. USA vs. White Noise
3. Blue Jeans
4. Sugar
5. He Took Her to a Movie
6. Playgirl
7. International Dateline
8. Fighting in Built Up Areas

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GE Reports interview (2014)

Liverpool musician and visual artist Reuben Wu is best known by millions of his global fans as the keyboardist in the pioneering electronic pop group Ladytron and an accomplished photographer. Last year, GE and the railroad company CSX gave Wu a chance to combine both of his passions.

Wu wrote a hypnotic soundtrack for a futuristic-looking video clip capturing a day in the life of a massive freight terminal in Ohio. The terminal is using GE locomotives connected to the Industrial Internet, an emerging digital network connecting people and machines with software and data.

Wu made the video in collaboration with director Noah Conopask, The Barbarian Group and GOODCOMPANY. Tomas Kellner, managing editor of GE Reports, talked to Wu about his inspiration, Ladytron, and making film music.



Tomas Kellner: You shot the video at a container terminal in Ohio, but it looks like it could easily be set in orbit around a distant planet. How did you come up with the concept?

Reuben Wu: Both Noah and I are really into science fiction. We were talking about Ridley Scott's Alien, Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Koyaanisqatsi, which are among my favorite films. They all portray technology, machinery, and also humanity in a very real way. This Industrial Internet technology is not that far from this future, it exists. And we realized that if we also subverted time and scale, we could produce something quite out of this world in northern Ohio.

You succeeded. Tell me about the process.

We started from a musical perspective. I think that was important. I created three musical ideas before we actually went on site. If the visuals and the music were to be synchronized together, the music really had to be there first, not the other way round.

Can you describe the three ideas?

The first idea combined pulsing energy with the kind of crunchiness and spiky-ness that we wanted to use for portraying the whole container yard. That's why we decided to go with it. The second one was a little bit more minimal and smoother and utopian-feeling, I suppose, and the third one used more break beats.

What happened next?

We created a proof of principle, a scouting video, the basic idea of what we planned to do. We went to the shipping site and shot-handheld footage, and I patched it in with the sounds.

Did you take part in the filming?

The idea was I would be collaborating on the visual level with Noah, as I'm as interested in vision as I am in sound. Also the subjects that I take pictures of are generally in the realm of science, technology and nature. So I shot as much footage as I could.

The terminal is huge. How did you wrap your arms around it?

At that point, everything was still very loose, as far as the concept went. I captured the sounds of everything that moved, that was mechanical. Before coming to the site, I knew that there were going to be cranes, containers and trains, and they were going to be the main elements that we would feature in the video.

The soundtrack is full of machine sounds.

I was recording absolutely everything during both the scouting and the shooting trips. I wanted to end up with a comprehensive library of sounds to pick and choose from as I composed the music. That's exactly what I did.

Did you have a system to organize the sounds?

Once I had recorded my samples, I categorized them into groups. I had crane, train, and container sounds. Those could all be separated within sub-categories as well; sharp percussive sounds, drones and bass sounds, for example.

The machines seem to be playing a melody.

Yeah, I was able to break the sounds down into musical elements as well. I found that a lot of the sounds of the cranes moving across the yard, for example, were almost melodic. They produced hydraulic hums and vibrations, which I thought worked on a different level than the percussive sounds.

Like those made by the containers?

The video really was all about the container. It was our building block for the whole video. It was important that there was a very simple, almost primal, sonic and visual language so I used the sound of the container hitting the ground. It's the first thing that we see and hear when the music kicks into play. We wanted that to really drive the visual language which develops over the course of the track.

How long were the samples you recorded?

All of the sounds are quite short and many of them are repeated quite a bit throughout the music. They make up about 65 percent of the audio content.

How did you splice the samples into the original track you composed?

I kept the music track intentionally basic, so when I introduced the samples, the samples would form a large portion of the musical backbone as well. I ended up doing a lot of swapping things in and out. Some samples I decided I needed to enhance with analog synthesizers. I spent some time complementing some of the samples with further electronic layers.

Can you share an example?

In the very first part of the piece you have a visual of a train whizzing past. It's a quick horizontal movement. I layered the train sample going from left to right in stereo with Korg MS-20 synthesizer sounds. A lot of the soundtrack elements are this combination of real and synthesized sounds.

I can also hear voices.

Yes, we recorded them in the control cab slung underneath the wide-span crane. Everything inside is computerized and there was a continual radio feed from operators at the terminal. We thought that it was important that we incorporated the human element within the whole piece.

How did you synchronize the soundtrack with the film footage?

We started with the music. Alex Hammer, our editor, imported the music into the editing suite and I provided him with my thoughts on phrasing, that any movement on screen would need a sound to go with it. I didn't want it to end up as a mishmash of sound effects. I sat with him and the director and there was a lot of going back and forth in iterations. What I really enjoyed about the process was that the editor had done some things on screen, which I hadn't anticipated. We had some really effective happy accidents.

I like happy accidents.

There is a bit where everything goes quiet after the sunset. It appears that all is quiet and calm, but things are still moving and the facility is still operating. The section that comes directly after that is the finale. There needed to be something just before the finale, like a big drum fill, so Alex cut in a crane shot that shows the cab from underneath. It's been cut in a quick, staccato way. At that moment, the music is actually mirroring the visuals with a synchronized sequence of beats and samples.

You make it sound easy. Is there a film soundtrack in your future?

I've always been interested. The GE project was my first commercial venture combining music and visuals. I am hoping that I'll be able to do a lot more in this field.

What's happening with Ladytron?

I've been concentrating on photography and projects like this one, but the plan is to do a new album this year.



Source

Marnie will shoot a new videoclip

Helen Marnie announced on her Facebook page: "Exciting news. I am shooting a video this coming weekend. YESSSSSSSSS!".

Links

1. Official sites
Ladytron
Daniel Hunt
Helen Marnie
Reuben Wu

2. Facebook
Ladytron
Daniel Hunt
Helen Marnie
Reuben Wu
Fan group

3. Twitter
Ladytron
Daniel Hunt
Helen Marnie
Reuben Wu

4. Wikipedia
Ladytron
Daniel Hunt
Helen Marnie
Mira Aroyo
Reuben Wu

5. Various
Helen Marnie's blog
Discogs
Allmusic
Rate Your Music
Last.fm
Setlist.fm
YouTube
Ladytron Daily

6. Buy
Amazon (Ladytron)
Amazon (Marnie)
iTunes (Ladytron)
iTunes (Marnie)
Bandcamp (Marnie)
Ladytron shop
Marnie shop

The Scotsman interview (2005)

Back with the future

The last time I saw Ladytron was the last time I was in Edinburgh's Gilded Balloon. Twenty-four hours after a set of robotically performed electropop, the Old Town venue went up in smoke. The futuristic music jarred - Jean Michel Jarred - with the setting of a world-class medieval heritage site and, while it definitely had an austere beauty, I wasn't convinced that the 21st century was ready for the band.

Flash-forward two and a half years to another ancient hall, the converted church that is Glasgow's Oran Mor, and suddenly Ladytron make perfect sense. The space-age costumes have gone.

"The uniforms got in the way and we got fed up being asked questions about them", explains Danny Hunt, the Liverpudlian band-member who does most of the talking in the bar after the gig. Helen Marnie, of the Scots-Bulgarian dual-singing axis, puts it more bluntly: "I got fed up looking like a boy".

So now Aberfoyle-born Marnie and Mira Aroyo wear slinky dresses and stand back-to-back centre stage, and during their best song - the great lost hit single "Seventeen" - they pose and pout and do a little Human League waitresses-in-cocktail-bar routine. "They only want you when you're 17..." they sing, "when you're 21 you're no fun". This isn't Ladytron selling out; they're simply making the most of what they've very obviously got.

The band took their name from the second track on the first Roxy Music album. While it may be tempting to think that, in the spirit of the first track, they've remade and re-modelled themselves for their upcoming third album, and what's more at record-company insistence, the young four-piece insist the changes are normal, part of natural development and a sign of their growing maturity.

"When we look back at our old videos we're like children", says Marnie, who in common with the others used to stand glumly behind a synthesizer". For the first couple of years I was quite nervous about being on stage. But we've just done our first American tour. That was a real head-stretcher and helped us grow up a bit".

Ladytron are a great-looking, great-sounding band who have yet to achieve great sales. With a new label - Island - behind them, they now find themselves in that strange holding-bay for cult groups: the one between those who make a couple of albums then split, possibly to be acclaimed as massively important only after they've become binmen; and those who go mainstream, with all that implies.

Interesting times for the band, as Hunt acknowledges. "I know every group will say this, but we've always tried to avoid commercial pressures", he says. "Take 'Seventeen'. It was a hit in Australia, Sweden and Spain and people in those countries assume it was a hit here too. Sometimes I think I'm glad it wasn't. It was small and interesting, like the band. I would have hated if it had become an albatross".

"But then I remember that it was released at Christmas, that it suffered from distribution problems, that the Tuesday of the week of release you couldn't buy it in the shops, and none of that can be termed useful for Ladytron".

The group are hoping for a better deal in every sense from Island, who were Roxy Music's old label. This most style-conscious of bands love the old palm-tree logo. But Aroyo, their most style-conscious member - she used to have an amazing, rocket-shaped haircut - is keen to play down the aesthetics this time.

For instance, when we're talking about their common interests, and I ask if it's true they have a shared appreciation of architecture, Aroyo says: "Kittens".

Sorry? "We like other things as well. In fact, we probably like kittens more than architecture". She thinks for a moment. "Kittens In Architecture - should that have been the title of the new album?".

The group are an intriguing cultural mix. Hunt's roots are "black Irish" but he's 100% Scouse. He reckons he's still on a high after DJing for 30,000 Liverpool football fans in Istanbul before the European Cup triumph ("You'll Never Walk Alone", obviously, "Teenage Kicks" and The Fall's "Mr Pharmacist" in tribute to John Peel, and a new team anthem, Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire").

The other bloke in the band is Reuben Wu, who confused the locals during Ladytron's recent British Council-sponsored tour of China. "They thought I was in the group to provide 'Asian effects'. They wouldn't believe I was Chinese because I don't speak Mandarin. I told them I spoke Cantonese and they were like: 'Why?'".

A number of things were lost in translation during this visit to a land where the band had previously sold just 250 records. "I was complimented on my 'Roman' voice", says Marnie. "I suppose the world looks different to China, so I politely suggested to them that I thought it had a Scottish lilt".

During the official welcome, Ladytron's Liverpool base was utilised by their hosts to bizarre effect, through a pub-singer rendition of "Yesterday" and a film depicting run-down streets in the city. Hunt, though, takes positives from the trip. "We were there as an apology for Wham!, the first Western pop combo to play China", he jokes.

The four met on Merseyside, where Marnie did a music degree. She was a "typical pop kid" in her youth. "I was in a group before, but the boys made me sing indie covers", she says. The rest of Ladytron were DJing in clubs when she met them. "I wasn't, I was dancing in clubs, but I guess all of us were looking for something that wasn't happening at that time".

Completing the line-up is Aroyo, the joker in the pack, who talks about their shared sense of humour as being like a "donkey-powered comedy train". The much-travelled Ladytron recently played her homeland, and Hunt admits his expectations of Bulgaria were of a "big grey cloud". "Instead", says Wu, "there were red Ferraris everywhere".

Nothing is what it seems these days, not even Ladytron. The new album is called Witching Hour, and while synthesizers are still very much to the fore, it has got more of a proper band sound, with real bass and actual drums. Aroyo suspects they're turning into "rock pigs".

They might wonder what life will be like in the 23rd century, but no more than anyone else does. "We don't want to be defined by it", says Hunt, who is probably only half-joking when he reveals that a new band rule forbids them to be photographed in front of buildings such as power stations chosen to illustrate future foreboding.

In the early days, according to Aroyo, people meeting Ladytron for the first time were disappointed to discover they weren't humanoids. Now - before our food is consumed in pill form, and music through a chip storing our record collections inserted in the brain - they would love a hit.

Source

Marnie - "Hearts of Fire" stems

Here are the stems (components) of the song "Hearts on Fire" by Marnie. She made these stems available for a remix competition. They were originally in WAV format but I converted them to FLAC, to save space (FLAC is lossless anyway).

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Transparent Days (SONOIO Remix)

A track from Gravity the Seducer Remixed. Mindblowing!



SONOIO is Alessandro Cortini, the keyboardist of Nine Inch Nails and also co-producer of two Ladytron albums (Velocifero & Gravity the Seducer). He also co-produced the song "We Are the Sea" from Marnie's album Crystal World.