Interview: Empress Of

PHOTO CREDIT: Fabian Guerrero
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY COOL ACCIDENTS, DECEMBER 2018



“Change is growth and I don’t want to make the same thing twice,” Lorely Rodriguez, the artist also known as Empress Of asserts, talking about the ever-evolving nature of creating music.

Of course, the songwriter and producer is currently experiencing the early throes of new album energy, with her sophomore record Us still fresh in our memory after its October release. As a collection of material, the Empress Of sound has become more defined and textured. Her exploration of pop music through an alternative lens first manifested with acclaimed debut album in Me back in 2015 and as she remarks of Us, continuing to find her creative voice and identity throughout the process has remained crucial.

“It’s the album where people either love it, or they hate it,” she admits. “That’s fine; making art, I feel that’s something that comes with the territory. My first album was so critically acclaimed, I had never experienced that and so the first time I read a bad review on this record I was like, ‘Oh, okay!’

“It was really empowering because I know I made something really special to me and this album is connecting with more fans than ever, so I must have done something really honest and genuine.”

The changes Rodriguez talks of are indicated in the title. A more collaborative effort than her debut, Us is an album that sees her flex her musicality alongside the likes of Dev Hynes and Jim-E Stack. Changing her approach to making this album also meant acknowledging her own personal growth and confidence as a writer, a big element of her process that Rodriguez says uplifted her and made the end result shine.

“I started making this record in the same way that I made the last record,” she remembers. “I was not getting the results I wanted to. Sometimes, doing the same thing twice isn’t going to work. I’ve grown as a person and as an artist and I need my music to reflect that as well.

“When I made my debut, I was trying to define that and trying to own my sounds,” she says. “I own it [now] and I don’t need to do that again. I can just do it. I can just be myself and I feel empowered in knowing that. The whole collaborating aspect is me just being really confident in who I am and going into a room with someone else and not being afraid of the result sounding like a departure. It’s not a departure. I feel confident in maintaining my sound.”

An avid fan of pop music and the different threads of influence that form today’s current tapestry of the genre, Rodriguez sits in a great position to thrive, both as an artist and as a music fan. 

“Blood Orange is a really good friend of mine,” she says. “Negro Swan was a big album for me. It was one of those albums that I put on and it soundtracked the year. I also toured with him so I got it in a really weird way as well, where I would hear him play it live every night. That was an important album.

“I think expectations can sometimes be really inhibiting, creatively,” she ponders, turning attention to the way artists are flipping the script on what is seen quintessentially ‘pop’. “I love when artists don’t give you what you expect. I really love the Ariana Grande album Sweetener; she makes huge records and she decided to make weird songs with Pharrell. It sounds like N*E*R*D! I love the courage that that takes and I love the courage that thank u, next takes. I also feel like I did that with my record, where people wanted me to make my debut again. I didn’t.”

Bringing new ideas to recording sessions and then inviting fans to be a part of the experience in the live realm are two things Rodriguez has been buzzing over as she approaches the beginning of the Us album tour cycle. While Australian fans wait patiently for our turn to see the album played out live, the Empress Of sphere of influence is about to get a lot bigger in the early months of 2019.

“Usually, people put records out and then they tour immediately,” she says. “I did that for my first album. I wanted to give some time to people to listen to the lyrics and listen to the songs, then go play. Have people know the songs. I was like, ‘Cool - record comes out October 19th, I’m going to tour in February’. Give people time to live with it.

“I’m on tour through until the end of March and then I’m going on tour doing my own shows playing the record. It’s going to be so fun and so special; I don’t have any Australian dates yet, but I’m just hoping that I can make it to play the record. I just want to share this record with people.”

Interview: Foster The People

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE AU REVIEW, DECEMBER 2017

The last time we caught up with Mark Foster of Foster the People, we were in Chicago; the band was set to play Grant Park’s Lollapalooza, a festival that had come off the back of a trip out to Australia for Splendour, as well as some sideshows to promote their then-latest album, Supermodel.

Even then, it was plain to see how much Foster the People had elevated themselves as a live unit since our introduction to the band in 2011. A formidable band exploring multiple influences that brought them out from under the indie rock umbrella, Foster the People were proving themselves to be more than a flash in the pan act out of Cali.

Fast forward to 2017, and I find myself in contact with Mark once more and the band is in a very different space to where they were when we first met. Returning to Australia for the first time since that Splendour tour for the Falls Festival, Foster the People have not only a new line up to debut for Australian fans – following the departure of Cubbie Fink in 2015 – but a new album too, in Sacred Hearts Club.

Executively produced by Foster, the frontman and songwriter takes me through the process of regrouping and pulling their ideas together for Album Number Three.

“It was the first record where I felt the confidence to be able to go in as a producer and not bring anybody for the bulk of the record.” he admits. “It was me and my band mate Isom [Innis]; the two of us locked ourselves in a studio and really took time to explore and see what the aesthetic was going to be for this record and really wanted to see what kind of music was revealed itself to us, as opposed to going in with somebody else overseeing it and cracking the whip in pushing things forward. I think we were just patient; our label was patient and everybody just said, “Take your time and just explore and see what comes out.””

“The first year in the studio, we just wrote without finishing anything,” he remembers. “We just wrote whatever came to us, whether it was hip-hop or heavily electronic influenced; punk or rock or psychedelic, whatever came we just chased it and then put it aside and started a new idea. By the end of that year, we had about thirty ideas out of eighty or ninety and started to carve out what the record was going to be.”

The end result of Sacred Hearts Club proved to be a significant sonic departure for Foster the People too, as the band explored those electronic, soul and funk influences that clearly trickled down in the early stages of production. As Foster explains, it was a freeing process.

“I think that we were intentional with not wanting the pressure of radio or trying to write a radio single,” he says. “We were really intentional about keeping that in the room and to just write and follow the spirit of creativity. I think that was very different from how we worked in the past; it was highly collaborative.”

“It’s nice to have that kind of support.” he says of the band’s backing from their label and behind the scenes team. “I also think over the years I’ve gotten better, even when that pressure was getting put on, my exoskeleton has gotten tougher. I wouldn’t be nearly as bothered as when I was 25 years old making my first record. At the end of the day I’ve learned how to take my successes and my failures – they’re going to land on my shoulders.”

“I think that there’s things I’ve learned from the past when rushing the process at the end and putting that out prematurely. It’s the worst feeling when you put something out when you didn’t quite feel like it was ready; you just release it and then over time, it’s proven to you that your instinct was right and it wasn’t finished. Now you have to live with that and all the thousands of hours put into that project would have all benefited from just twenty more hours. The last part of the marathon is always the trickiest, because song writing is like staring at the same puzzle for so long. At the end of it, you’re staring at these ten or twelve different puzzles that you think you’ve finished and then you’re stacking them next to each other, trying to sequence it with the whole thing. Making good records is hard.”

Interview: Ruel

PHOTO CREDIT: Michelle Grace Hunder
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY TRIPLE J, OCTOBER 2018

"When people say they don't read the comments, they're lying."

You might remember Ruel's impactful presence on M-Phazes' Like A Version session last year? Perhaps you've been getting in your feelings over his hit singles 'Younger' and 'Dazed and Confused'?

When it comes down to it, it's that huge soulful voice that has brought the 15 year old Sydneysider a huge amount of acclaim in a short period of time. With a headline Australian tour already underway, and highly anticipated European tour dates before the year is out, Ruel has certainly been thrust into a spotlight not many teenagers can relate to.

For Ruel, traversing the often bumpy terrain that is the social media-dominated community is all about percentages. When it comes to dealing with the pressures of maintaining a presence online and in doing so, dealing with online trolling, Ruel's got his own way of managing.

"I’ve never had a problem with being offended with that stuff," he says. "I think I’m pretty lucky. It might be the way I’ve been brought up by my parents or the environment I’ve been in; growing up I didn’t have the greatest friends and the greatest of experiences and I guess that toughened me up for this. When it’s online, I turn it off. Close your eyes. I feel it’s a lot easier to get away from. That might just be me and I can understand why people find it a lot harder, but I haven’t had a huge problem with that."

"When people say they don’t read the comments, they’re lying." he asserts. "Everyone reads the comments, whatever status you’re at. You can’t avoid it. It’s just the way you take them and the way you see it, is the only way you can ignore the hate. You’ve got to put it into perspective, how many people are giving you compliments and how many people are giving you negative comments. When 70% are giving you compliments and 30% aren’t, don’t sweat it at all."

This week will have Ruel back on the road with the Ready EP, after completing a sold out show at The Corner Hotel in Melbourne and heading west to Perth last weekend. Fan footage from those shows are mixture of raised phones, screams, huge sing along sessions and at the centre of it all, a 15 year old simply living his best life.

"As a kid, when you think of being a singer travelling around the world, you think of just the great things." Ruel says. "Getting money, living in mansions, playing to fans. When I was really young, that’s all I thought it was."

"I’ve just noticed how much more it is than that. Obviously I’m still at the very start of my career, but it’s definitely changed in terms of my fans. I try to do a meet and greet after every show for no extra charge. I try and go through the whole crowd and meet everyone who bought a ticket because they bought a ticket to see me – I want to meet them, I want to talk to them. When I talk to them, it’s really cool because when they’re chill, we just have a conversation. It’s not just me having a wall between my fans, it’s cool to almost have a bunch of friends who I can hang out with after a concert."

Ruel's debut EP Ready has accumulated over 50 million streams, while each of his music videos are sitting on a combined view count that exceeds four million. Get him talking about being approached to play Tyler, The Creator's Camp Flog Gnaw festival, and Ruel's response is what you'd expect - "It's a dream come true".

A quick Twitter search will show fans urging Ruel collaborations with fellow young-names-of-the-moment in Khalid, Shawn Mendes and Billie Eilish, while if you search his name on Instagram, you'll quickly notice the amount of fan accounts that have been created for the singer off the back of successful tours of the US and more recently, Japan.

"The first time I was there, I had no idea I had anything close to a fanbase there." he remembers.

"As soon as I got to the hotel, there were fans waiting there giving gifts, little scrapbooks that they’d made. I was so surprised. I was thinking to myself, ‘I wonder what the show’s going to be like now?’ and it was a lot different to what I thought!"

"When I went on stage…they weren’t silent, but they weren’t crazy at all. They were a very respectful audience. Someone told me that if you draw a line between a Japanese fanbase and their biggest idol, and told them not to cross it? No one would. They’re so respectful."

Ruel credits his family and tour team with anchoring him in the midst of what's felt like a tornado of action; having his parents and sisters on the road with him at times has further ensured that he remains centred - definitely still the little brother.

"They’re always going to keep me grounded, no matter what happens." he says. "I’m just around good people and they’re my family. I won’t be getting too big for my boots!"

The lasting effect Ruel's family has had on him and his musical choices even continues to show itself today.

"My dad’s love for music, he’s a huge music nerd," he says. "He’s just influenced me with so many great artists I resonated with at a young age. So much soul, R&B and jazz music. Everything that makes you feel. That’s just resonated with me for a long time. He set up guitar lessons for me when I was 8, actually."

"In this new era of music, I really think it’s about modernising older genres. I feel like the best way to do that is to put young people who have been influenced by that music from a super young age, and take it into a different area. I think that’s what a lot of younger artists are doing [like Khalid] and I think that’s why they’re getting the attention."