In Conversation with
Kylyra
February 2008
A little background:
Some interviews I do with acts are acts I find and
interested by their music, I contact them quite quickly.
Other acts like alternative dance act, Kylyra
I do in a completely different way.
Some of you may or may not know but besides being
a interview master at ‘Setting Sun’ – I also run my own
poetry page on myspace.com and I like to try and network
on here to encourage people to read and offer feedback
on my poetry.
What has happened on this page is I had made a number
of friends on here who I talk to on a whole host of
topics some certainly more poetry based than others.
Ireland based Kylyra is one of them. When I invited
her to be a friend off mine she sent me back a very sweet
note and I started writing to her enjoying her
Correspondence.
I only actually started listening to her alternative dance
solo music and her rock music with her brother
‘Deemed Psychotic’ a good month or two after I first
Started writing to her and really enjoyed it to such a
degree, I thought to myself she in some ways is very similar
to me in the sense she is involved in a couple of bands,
writes poetry, is writing a novel and is also involved
in several other creative projects, I must interview
her for ‘Setting Sun’.
Of course Kylyra agreed straight away to the interview
and the rest is history as I like to say!
Her solo music myspace.com page is http://www.myspace.com/kylyramusic
Deemed Psychotic – her other music project can be sampled here
http://www.myspace.com/deemedpsychotic
Thanks to Kylyra for the interview! I certainly
hope to see your novel in the lights someday!
Cheers
Andy N
Setting Sun:
How are things and what’s happening at the moment?
Kylyra
Chinese saying 'may you live in interesting
times'! I've
never been busier in my life. My latest solo
release,
VOX, is getting lots of attention; my videos
out at
Planet Mythos Video on YouTube are getting
viewed
on a steady basis; my band, Deemed Psychotic
has a
growing number of fans; and my first novel
(The Demon
of Petty Disturbances: Doh-da) is with my new
literary agent
in New York.
Setting Sun:
Next, can you tell us a little bit about your music –
who fired the
starting pistol as I like to say
sometimes etc?
Kylyra
my parents. They didn't approve of a
musician's lifestyle
and actively discouraged me from taking it up
seriously.
Luckily for me, they didn't quite succeed. My
brother,
Tor, has always been my biggest fan. When he
returned
home after a long absence in 1994 and found
that I'd
given up music he just couldn't stand for it.
He kept
encouraging me and did everything he could to
get me
to do something - anything - with music. I
dragged
my feet and resisted; he could get me to
tinker
on a keyboard but only if there was no one
around to hear me.
Then Tor played Sven Vaeth's CD 'Accident
in
Paradise' for me. I know it might sound
cliché to say
that one CD changed everything, but it did. I
fell in
love with Vaeth's sound; with the brilliant
way on
that CD that he melded grooving techno with
classical
pieces and environments. I knew immediately
that I
wanted to do something similar.
I had several snippets of melody that I'd written and
sequenced ..s. My first attempt at my own
recordings
was to combine these sequences with rhythm
tracks
from a Roland MC-303 Groovebox (which I still
work with, by the way). I have to credit my
producer J.A. Bohr here; I probably would
have tinkered with the mixes forever and
never recorded anything without his
prompting.
He helped me get my first release, 'first
steps' out,
which included some great recordings I'd done
with him.
Since then it's been hard to hold me back. Not that
anyone at Dark World International has tried;
just
the opposite, in fact. The entire staff keeps
encouraging
me to go for exactly what I want on every
song and
not worry about melding it into an album, or
keeping it within a certain time frame. It's
very
freeing as an artist!
Setting Sun:
Music-wise, what are your influences and who are
you listening to at
the moment?
Kylyra
I find I'm very
influenced by what I happen to be
listening to while
writing and recording music.
Probably a lot of
these will seem strange, because
I doubt you'd ever
hear them in my own stuff,
but here goes: Sven
Vaeth (obviously), Descendents,
Heart, AC/DC, Pink
Floyd, Jane's Addiction,
Led Zeppelin, The
Police, Janis Joplin, Nina Simone,
Ella Fitzgerald, Meat
Beat Manifesto, Bjork,
Love and Rockets,
Bauhaus, The Cure, Judas Priest,
Rush, Supertramp,
INXS, Peter Murphy, New Order,
Echo & the
Bunnymen, Tool, Temple of the Dog, and
everything in the Dark
World libraries - Infinisynth,
Deemed Psychotic,
Milwaukee's Black Orchid, Stygian Tars,
Future Dialogue, Tor's
Angst, Doctor When, Johnny M,
Dream Quest, and my
solo stuff. I've also been listening a
lot to killed by 9V
batteries and Boozed right now since
I've got video
projects with both bands going.
Setting Sun:
Do you play concerts?
If so, how does your approach
change to playing in
your studio work?
Kylyra
I haven't played a
concert as a solo artist for a long
time. It's been
something that's been nagging at my mind,
to be honest. I do
have plans to start gigging out
with my next release
(called 'darkwold.com'),
which I wrote while I
was recording 'VOX'. I'm
scheduled to be
recording it this year. I've
returned to my techno
roots with 'darkworld.com';
it's heavy on groove
and has no vocals. So I'm
anxious to get out and
have some fun.
When I do gig out, I think most people (who have seen
me in the studio) are
surprised at how relaxed and kicked
back I am. I'm a
perfectionist to the point of madness
in the studio; when I
go live I know my limitations and
capabilities, and work
a show that I'm comfortable with.
Of all the ways music
can be presented to an audience,
live concerts put the
most stress on showmanship rather
than musicianship.
I've seen audiences go nuts over highly
energetic but crappy
sounding performances and vice versa.
So it's very important
to me to be extremely comfortable
with my set and my
show; I want plenty of time to
interact with the
audience.
Setting Sun:
Probably my favourite song of yours is
‘The Urban Garden ‘ –
can you tell us a little
bit more about that
song?
Kylyra
Thank you for
mentioning 'The Urban Garden'.
It's an older piece of
mine and originally from
the release 'first
steps'. I wrote the melody
while living in
Minneapolis. I found the city
nice for some aspects
of living, but the views
out of the apartment were
all concrete jungle,
so I created a huge
indoor garden in the apartment
with over 100 plants
ranging from tiny potted
flowers to a huge tree
(over 6 feet tall) that I'd
found abandoned near
the bins. My keyboard
was set up in a corner
near the front room window and
I was surrounded by all these plants.
Musically
'The Urban Garden' is
a reflection of that room in
Minneapolis; a time
capsule of standing amidst a
ton of plants while gazing down at dazzling concrete.
So basically you've got a simple, repeating
melody
that floats over some rather bombastic rhythm
tracks.
The song breaks into a short refrain section
(echoed
three times to a greater or lesser extent)
that, for me,
somehow completely expresses the bursts joy I
felt
standing there. I did a number of different
remixes
of that melody but none quite captured the
feel that
'The Urban Garden' got. I can't listen to it
without
remembering that room, and smiling.
Setting Sun:
Also good to see you have a band going with your
brother ‘ Deemed
Psychotic‘ – can you tell us a little
bit more about that
also? How does it compare to
your own solo stuff?
Kylyra:
Well, let me start by saying that fans of my early techno
material will probably get a shock when they
hear
Deemed Psychotic! My solo material is based
in dance
grooves, for the most part, but Deemed
Psychotic is 100%
hard rock with a punk tinge to it.
I didn't actually think to myself
that it was time for me
to go out and be a hard rock singer. It
happened a bit by
accident; my brother and I were just jamming
in the studio,
getting some energy out and I was feeling
particularly...well,
cocky, for lack of a better word. I grabbed a
mic (which I
usually don't do when jamming) and just
opened up my
mouth and let loose. When the music stopped
the room got
really quite and my brother just said 'I
didn't know
you were a hard rock screamer'. We kept
going, the record
button was hit, and things just took off.
When the President
at Dark World International heard the roughs
he loved
them and asked us to mould the sound into
something
a bit more mainstream for the company.
We
went back into the studio, this time officially as
Deemed Psychotic, and really began writing
together
for the first time. The music just flowed out
of us. My
brother would pick up his guitar and start
strumming,
then I'd start to hum while gazing through
some lyrical
snippets, and before you could say 'hit the
record button'
we were off and running with something. We
played to
our strengths in Deemed Psychotic; my brother
played
all the guitars and bass while I did the keys
and wrote
most of the lyrics. We didn't stop writing
music until we
had enough material to begin our third
release; by then
we were pretty burnt out and Kris (the
President) made us
stop even though we didn't want to.
Setting Sun:
What’s next for you? Do you have any recordings
planned etc?
Kylyra:
Yes, I'm scheduled to head back into the studio this spring to
finish recording
Deemed Psychotic's second release.
I want to get some
better vocal tracks done, and fiddle
a bit with some keys
on a couple of songs. Then I'll be
working on my next
solo release, darkworld.com, over
the summer and autumn.
I've got several video projects
queuing up already,
and I know I'll have work to do
on my novel soon.
Most of all I've got to stay loose over the next few months
and be ready to jump
in whatever direction the wind blows.
I'm really lucky to have
the support of everyone at Dark World
for all my projects,
and that includes my writing.
Setting Sun:
I normally ask people
next where they are from and
what’s the local
scene is where you are, but I already
know where you are
from in Ireland so I can guess the
local scene is pretty
quiet, so I’ll just ask you have you
being to any good
gigs recently etc?
Kylyra:
You've really got me
smiling on this one; you must
be familiar with the
Irish countryside! Yes, the local scene
is small and quiet,
but as a matter of fact I recently
attended Eurosonic in
Groningen, Netherlands. It was a
mind blowing display
of talent from around the EU and
included just about
any genre you could name: rock,
goth, metal,
industrial, pop, r&b, folk, avant-garde,
techno, jazz, etc.
I had the go ahead from Dark World to take my
video camera and shoot
for Planet Mythos Video on
YouTube. I've already
posted a special video on an
Austrian band, killed
by 9V batteries. I did a lot of
filming for them and
hoped to get an interview but that
just didn't work out.
They put on a really good show
and combined some
noise/ambience pieces in between
their songs that
really flowed well on stage. I can
highly recommend them
if you're into
indie/shoegaze/punk bands;
go see them live and get
their debut CD which
is just great!
I also am putting a video together for Boozed from Germany.
These guys are into
acid/blues/rock and really have a
well choreographed
show put together! They tour
almost non-stop (it shows)
and have a huge push behind
them right now, with a
great management team at
Heart-Rawk and a
number of corporate sponsors; I'd say
this is a band you're
going to hear a lot more from very soon.
Another band to watch for is Von Hertzen Brothers
from Finland. They
took the stage at a large venue called
Vera and reminded me
sharply of seeing
Pink Floyd years ago.
They're big out on MySpace and
with good reason; just
listen to their music!
I wish I'd kept better notes; I saw so many acts that I've
lost track of all of
them. I can tell you this, having seen
Eurosonic last year:
overall, the sound and the music
was 100% better this
year. They really got some great stuff
in, and although they
tend to be a bit heavy in choosing
Dutch bands and artists
it's still a fantastic event
to check out what's
hot all over Europe.
Setting Sun:
What would be your
dream job if you were not a musician?
Kylyra:
Producing new artists.
I've learned over the years
how much a producer
can do on a recording, and
if I wasn't actively
making music myself I'd be
behind the boards
mixing. I'm slowly learning some
of the ins and outs of
it while I record; that's actually
encouraged at Dark
World so artists have a better
working relationship with
the engineers and producers.
Setting Sun:
What would you like
to be doing when you are 60?
Kylyra:
Dating men young enough to be my grandson. ;)
Setting Sun:
Lastly, what will you
be doing when you are 60?
Kylyra:
Producing and pushing new artists in
between writing my 12th best selling novel.