Interview with ‘Darkwave Duchess’ Abra
Ask Abra who she is and she’ll resolutely say she doesn’t know. That who anybody truly is, is changing all the time.
A social pariah as a child, the New York-born, London-raised artist found solace in writing, letting the thoughts she’d once kept restricted to the four corners of her mind flow onto paper – tangible representations of exactly what was going on in her head.
Now an accomplished singer, songwriter and producer, Abra already had two EPs under her belt, before her third release, Princess, made it a triad of triumphs.
Where its predecessors, BLQ Velvet and Rose, were an outpouring for a complex swell of emotions, Princess carries with it something altogether different – a certain assuredness, in spite of Abra’s proclamation that she is solely a vessel for her own imagination.
Speaking to the Awful Records protégé, we shone light on the self-dubbed ‘Darkwave Duchess’ and an identity, which, in spite of its constant evolution, still lies firmly in the shadows.
fluoro. It’s been a very big few years for you, hasn’t it?
Abra. Yeah, it’s been kinda crazy.
f. It’s been insane. How did you feel releasing Princess?
A. I was scared at first, because I didn’t have a sense of me in terms of my process. But, when it came out, it did really well. It did better than I expected. But, then again, I don’t really know what I expected. I had fun doing it and I’m glad I got to release it the way I wanted to – I think it went really well.
f. The journey that has gotten you here has been quite a tough one. How did you get from the singer/songwriter/producer on YouTube to where you are now?
A. You can never really tell, it’s never one thing – it’s a collection of experiences. But I would say, the main thing that changed from before or when I was doing the stuff on YouTube to where I’m at now is that I just put all my eggs in this basket. Before then, I used to do things all spread out, with a lot of different things, but then I finally dedicated 100% of my time to making projects.
I started prioritising art over things like partying and hanging out. I still did all that, but it was the music that came first at that point and that’s when everything changed.
f. With this change, do you feel like you’ve got more confidence in the creation of your music?
A. Yeah, for sure, and it made me confident as a person too, because then I was able to contribute something back.
f. Now let’s talk about signing to Awful. Was that fateful? How did that come about?
It came out naturally because we were friends first and we’d been friends for a while. We didn’t hang out that much, but we were friends and it was fun because I had other people I could create with.
It was a really organic process. I never really thought of it like ‘oh wow, I’m making a huge decision’, it was just that I decided to put myself around people who put art first, and that was really important for me and to me.
f. Your art. Tell us about it. How would you describe your sound?
A. would say it’s kind of dance music, but very bass-y – you know, soulful, nostalgic. Kinda like freestyle music, but with a little bit of R&B and very pop.
I get a lot of drum patterns and I also like metal and rock music, so, it’s like a fusion of everything that has, or is, a part of me. It has everything that made me want to make music.
f. Listening to your sound, it is that freestyle, it is that Miami freestyle, those synths, the electro funk, bringing in R&B. Where did all these little nuances come from in your life? Was it something you grew up with?
A. No, not really. I didn’t really grow up with that kind of music, but when I did decide to branch out on my own and to explore music for myself, I didn’t really know where to go. So I was downloading music and I would download anything – anyone I heard people at school talking about – and it just gave me a really wide variety. I didn’t listen to what I liked, I listened to whatever I could get my hands on.
f. Your first album has a different sound and feeling. What changed from your first album, BLQ Velvet to Princess?
A. Some things changed – my motivations, of course, because when I made BLQ Velvet I had just gotten out of a break-up, so at that point, I was just wanting to prove something to myself, I guess. To prove something to my ex. It was a little bit more expressive of personal emotions and a little bit more rushed. Nobody knew me then, so I didn’t really have any pressure. I didn’t really set a super high bar for myself, but I did want to make some good music.
From there, it just became about evolving and trying not to plateau and not to put out music that sounded like the last project, so I tried really hard to evolve my sound and work on my production skills, because before BLQ Velvet I wasn’t really producing. The difference, I guess, is trying to raise the bar, but I feel like there’s a lot more to prove with BLQ Velvet and Rose, because I was still really hurt over my break-up, so it was like fight-fuelled excessive.
With Princess, I don’t really know how to explain it… I was just like ‘let me see what I could do now, let’s see how much farther I could take this’. And I wasn’t writing songs that expressed what I was really going through at the time, I just wrote songs that were more ambient. Songs that could set a mood. Songs that described specific things, but that weren’t just heartbreak songs conveying my emotions.
f. So that was almost a release for you? Was it closure?
A. It was more just like ‘okay, I’ve done my thing. I’ve expressed myself. I’ve gotten the hurt out. Now what can I do without it?’
I wasn’t gonna try and express the emotions, I wasn’t able to get the last word in with someone who hurt me, so I wanted to have fun with this project and be a little more carefree with it and not worry about that shit as much.
f. Talk to us about this great power within, which you mentioned came to you when you wrote Roses after your grandmother passed away. Is that a feeling you always feel when you create? Or is it with particular moments in your life?
A. When I create… but it’s not every song I have that feeling with. I can usually tell within about 45 minutes if this is something special or if it’s me working hard to craft something. My friends call it my genie, because whenever it comes I just hole up in my room and I never leave. I’m just get really directed in what I do, it’s like the blueprint for the song being so clear and I know that it’s not something within myself.
f. Where do you go when you’re writing your music? Do you lock yourself in your room? Or is there another place that you like to go to?
A. Oh no, it’s definitely either in my room or in my car; those are my two safe places, that’s where I do a lot of writing. Mainly most of the writing goes on in my car – I just drive all through the night, up and down long stretches of empty highway, creating an environment – and then most of the production goes on in my room.
f. You were born in New York, raised in South London and then you returned to the US and landed in Atlanta. How did your upbringing shape your work? Has it shaped your work?
A. Yeah, I think so. I say it a lot, but I didn’t really fit in.
When you’re always moving, and to very, very different places – like New York is very different to Atlanta, and New York and Atlanta are both very different from London – when you’re having to make changes like that, you have to learn to adapt really quickly, but it also makes you fear change sometimes.
Those aspects, they really made me headstrong in my production, and I’m not about to change it up and work with another producer or switch my engineer last minute. I’m not going to do anything like that because I really I hold my process – it’s really sentimental to me.
But, also, it can change. I can change my sound as I want to – I’m good at adapting.
As far as my writing goes, I feel like, because I never really grew up with close friends that knew so much about me, I withheld my emotions and how I felt about things, so I felt really repressed growing up as a kid. It made me think a lot, it made me live inside my head a lot. And then I realised that when I was able to just write poetry or write music, I would be able to figure out and analyse how I was feeling through seeing my words on paper.
It was like therapy for me being able to write, because in your head, it’s like a jumble of insecurities, anxieties, whatever, but when I was able to write, it came out very politically. I think because I’d been stewing in it for so long and I wasn’t sharing my ideas or my thoughts with people that I could be that vulnerable with.
I would say that, yeah, moving around a lot really affected who I am and the way I write.
f. Are you working on any projects at the moment?
A. I’m going to start working on my album when I get back from my short tour. So, right now, I’m just trying to warm back up, working on a song here and there, but just trying to get the process back in motion, because I haven’t been producing. Well… actually I haven’t worked on any music really since Princess, so now I’m just trying to get warmed up again.
f. Are you working with other producers or collaborating with anyone at the moment?
A. No one right now no.
I’m fine to work by myself, but if something natural comes up and it seems right and there’s chemistry there, I’m down to do that as well. Sometimes when I collab it’s just too much for me, because I’m just a really one-track mind person. I can’t focus on too many things and I really do believe that too many cooks in the kitchen can make the soup taste bad. It just gets kinda confused.
Not that I don’t need help, but I just feel that, at least right now, I can do things at the pace I want to and express my ideas without much friction, and I don’t really have that in my day-to-day life – I never really had that in my day-to-day life… So art is kind of my sanctuary and my escape from other people trying to impose what they want on me
f. What do you do to chill?
A. I wouldn’t say I do anything. I would just relax, watch a movie, talk to my friends, just normal stuff. But I’m pretty much a loner. I don’t really hang out a lot. There’s a lot of sitting in my room reading, thinking, maybe going for a walk, stuff like that.
So, it’s weird, I don’t really have a set thing right now because this is the first time I have been able to hang out at home in months. Up until this point, I was reading every week, every two weeks.
f. What influences your work and what do you work with in terms of music production?
A. I don’t really know how it influences my work, but technology definitely allows me to create full sound with instruments that I’ve never played before. I can download a base or a synth or horns. I don’t really play those but, through technology, I’m still able to create full sound and use my voice over it and make it sound like a choir. I can basically have the function of many people, while remaining completely self-contained in my art.
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Later this month, Abra will break out of the confines of that self-imposed containment, as she embarks upon the next stages of her voyage of self-exploration; with a seven-date European tour. Going back to grassroots for an opening gig in London on Thursday 20 October 2016, before heading on to Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium and France, this is a string of performances set to form a commanding prelude to, and basis for, the Darkwave Duchess’ forthcoming releases.
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