FADER
GRIMES
At first I guess there was just Grimes
I don’t technically have control
Over her narrative anymore
You know she very much exists in pop culture now
Grimes as one person cannot represent
more than a couple ideas
That’s why I started developing
some of the other characters
like really abstract from like who I am
or how I am
You can start being an actor and like
start like adding in more voices
and start realizing that you don’t just have to
like not everything has to fully reflect you
The art angels are the face of it
We’re more like superheroes more like villains
They are the performers and I’m like the producer writer
So much of my music is just like against
like the people who are trying to take it away from me
I guess the overall tone is sort of like
Aggressive being word
Either like aggressively angry or aggressively stoked
You have to push people and
you have to become aggressive or you can’t
get your way
But you know i’d constantly be getting emails
from like producers and stuff being like
I’d love to like work on some tracks on your album
and it’s just like
you know that’s like me like saying to you guys like
Hey can i film this interview for you
or hey can I do your interview for you or something
You know it’s just people offering to do your job all the time
and it’s just like infuriating
I mean even just to get to the point where I could like
produce my own record and have everyone fuck off
and not like give me shit for it you know
Just let me do my fucking job
like why else am i here like
I don’t want to be just like the face
of this thing that i built I want to be
the person who built it
Just realizing there’s no one who’s going to
take control over this besides me
Like if I want this to run smoothly and
I want this to happen then I just have
to like you know tell people what I want
and what I need
which used to be very hard for me
I didn’t want to put something out
that wasn’t like a full transition into
the contemporary version of Grimes
I basically toured the world since Visions
I learned how to perform I learned how to sing
Just doing like a full pop show feels weird
So I started like screaming a little bit
Then I started screaming a lot
Phan is a Taiwanese rapper
I sent her some weird song that
Kind of sounded like Pantero with beats
I was like do you want to work with me on this
Hey
I’m curious about how did you find my music
One of my friends actually found it
and sent it to me
And I thought it was like
I just hadn’t ever heard anything
that sounded like it before
When I was finishing my album
I really wanted a rapper
But I wanted like
the most crazy thing I could find
I feel like your rapping is very aggressive
Usually I play just myself
Cool
and my controller
And sometimes some samplers
And I think you do it like that
Yeah I think it’s like a similar
Yeah like alone and like MPCs
and looper and stuff like that
When you play shows do people dance
or is it more like
Yeah I think they will dance
But sometimes they just stand there
and they stare at me
It’s the same for me sometimes they dance
and sometimes they just stand and stare
Do you have a job besides music
I’m also a teacher and I have
children to write stories
so that helps me a lot because I’m
always inspired by the children
Do you show them your music
No that’s weird
There’s a
point that everything is so digital
that you stop
It feels less like tangible and like less real
Real instruments just kind of like
presented a challenge to me
You can start taking more risks like
tonally and sonically
Process is as important as the final product
And I think like the fact that I’m not like
a super-proficient guitar player or violin player
whatever is kind of important
It’s the first time that I’ve had the budget or the skill set
to actually like reference any of the music I actually grew up on
Like in one of these songs it’s like the guitar sound
the guitar sound is like A Perfect Circle
And so it conjures all of these ideas
It’s like that whole lineage of music
Like every sound and every color and every visual
has a giant connection to human history
that just goes back like thousands of years
You can’t just like erase that stuff and pretend it doesn’t exist
That visual and that sound just like means all these things
like whether you want it to or not
It’s been really fun to just kind of
have the world at my fingertips
Grimes Art Angel