PREMIERE | Katie Lass, "Sunshine 1"
Introducing Detroit-based artist Katie Lass; press photo courtesy of the artist.
There is something exciting that happens when artists, industry agents and otherwise behind the scenes liaisons emerge into the aesthetic conversation. New worlds emerge, new sounds, new sights, new experiences, new feelings and new perspectives that have never before been entertained or encountered previously. These nascent aesthetes have the power to challenge the conventions of art as we have known them to be, presenting new multimedia arrays of expression that challenge the natural order of understanding the world, our own engagement with the arts, one another and what art can be. Traces of the familiar can often be detected into the inherent fabrics and comparative ingredients stitched into the work at hand, but the sense of radical newness allows the audience to take notice of something unique going on. Textures and tones can give way to observing new progressive processes that pushes the aesthetic forward into new stratospheres of artistic approaches, inspiring even newer vanguards of the arts whose names, styles and statements the world has to witness for themselves.
Meet Detroit-based artist Katie Lass who has pressed some of your favorite records on wax and now steps into the spotlight with the debut album Hypnopomp for HHBTM / Remove Records. The gatekeepers of the world might lavish the breakout record with superlatives alluding to subversive artistic movements past, present and future, but what becomes abundantly clear on Hypnopomp is an ambitious approach to experimental world building. A fancy free dawning springs to form on "Can You Take Me Back", to the night riding shades of midnight of "Luster", rhythm collage experiments on "Hypnopompamus", the mesmerizing twinkle and shine of "Ctan6 - !", the echoing coastal balladry that comprises "Shadow on the Shoreline", to orchestrating new takes on the construct of genre with "Nonpop". Atmospheres are created in some unusual manners that oscillate the mind like the coolness of "Claw", the waterside psychotropic escapes of "Seaweedhead", to the further transcendent splashes heard and felt on "Pin & Ripple", weaving new textiles of new wonders with "Porous Rags", producing portals to new realms through "Long Window", as "Eidolon Orbit" summons specters from the netherworlds, concluding the song cycle with the experimental candied canyon warp of "Sugar Chasm".
Katie Lass presents the premiere of solar-bedazzled “Sunshine 1”, accompanied by visuals animated by the artist, along with camera work by Kevin McKay. A kaleidoscopic collage of filters, cryptic frequencies and rumbling rhythms murmur and crackle like a surrealistic transmission from the furthest outer reaches. Lass blends self-made visual media in harmony with a psych-soaked ode to our connection with the surrounding galactic sciences that loom high above us in the cosmic astral planes. The over-exposed lighting effects lens features the multi-disciplinary artist venturing through forests and groves, interspersed with colors and shapes that roll and tumble like an electric stained glass motion painting. "Sunshine 1" casts a radiant beam that ponders our own human and organic relationship with both the lesser and charted frontiers. The power of Katie Lass' works, both audio and visuals, is the keen ability to make the seemingly disparate paradoxes of the familiar and strange feel one and the same. "Sunshine 1" makes both planet earth and the famous, fiery solar star feel a little bit closer together in a kindred astrological harmony.
Reflections by Katie Lass; press photo courtesy of the artist.
Katie Lass provided some generous insights on the debut album Hypnopomp, the new single, visual and more:
Hypnopomp
Hypnopomp is my first album. I deliberately set out to shake off the haze of apprehension which previously kept me from creating the world I wanted for myself. Emerging from false illusion, finding myself in a new realm of my own making. I needed to figure out how to accept myself completely and assert the validity of my abilities as they were, all while striving to be a better songwriter and exploring some different styles. There was a definite sense of urgency for me surrounding my desire to get a whole album together once I started recording my ideas in 2020. I moved through a lot of lesser material before I began arriving at some tracks I thought would stick. These final 14 songs mostly started as emotive, stream of consciousness melodies. Many of them are layered with overdubs, some of them are more pared down live takes. I used loops and samples but also did live multi-tracking at times, it really depends on the song and the process was intuitive, reactionary, organic. Some of this music is really raw and personal, but I had to establish a free, anything goes space to discover my own sound. Through trance and through repetition, things started falling into place. I tend to feel that if you can surrender yourself to the process and eliminate self consciousness then you might capture something pure enough in your own relief and joy that it could become a lasting beacon for others to also take joy in. I hope there’s a combination of vulnerability and transcendence in this album. It feels a bit impossible to describe what the music is really about. I feel best about communicating in sounds and images and all the infinitesimal nuance that those things can contain.
A couple tracks on the album feature contributions from friends, but 99% of the music is self-made and home-recorded. I played all the instruments on almost all of the tracks. I had never played a live show prior to finishing this album. Since finishing the album I have started playing shows and currently I’m playing as a duo with another guitarist/songwriter. Making this first album myself was really my way of trial by fire self-actualization. I learn things best by doing them myself, making mistakes, making discoveries, soaking up advice from other artists and embracing the fact that uncertainty is always at hand. Maybe the production on this album isn’t quite industry standard, but it was made in the spirit of seizing the moment and making something original outside of the usual expectations and guidelines and then moving forward from there. Of course I was influenced by plenty of music and I’m sure there’s evidence of those influences all over this album. I won’t bother listing my influences here because depending on the experience of the listener, different impressions will be taken from the music than I ever consciously intended anyway. The point is I love lots of different kinds of music, I can’t get enough. I wanted more of it, so I made the new music I wanted to hear and within that I captured many strong and strange moods.
Creative conversations with Katie Lass; press photo courtesy of the artist.
“Sunshine1” video
A friend of mine remarked that watching this video feels a lot like being shot out of a confetti cannon. On my more heightened days that is a good approximation for how I feel. I used some of my paintings and illustrations, animating the faces of the drawings and layered those in with the video footage. Kevin McKay took some shots of me in this forest area we sometimes walk around in, but a lot of the shots I took or created myself. Using some different software I was able to effect and sequence the layers, in a sense painting with the light and images to simulate the movement in the songs. I drew a crude sun on my shirt with black dye in the interest of pop art simplicity, embracing the budget-less DIY nature of this first video endeavor. I would work on editing and adding things in here and there and it finally came together over the course of a few months.
I would say “Sunshine1” is a psych-pop song, born out of the sense that every thing is alive and equally in conversation with every other thing. Each point in space and time as meaningful as the next and connected, bringing rise to certain happenstance harmonies. The sun and stars give rise to the spectrum of all we can see and all that sees us. There is a reciprocity in nature that can be comforting or frighteningly powerful. You may worship the sun or you may want to hide away from it. All those extremes and everything in between provided the inspiration for this song.
The debut Katie Lass album Hypnopomp will be available November 4 via HHBTM Records / Remove Records.
Cover art for Hypnopomp, courtesy of Katie Lass.