Holy Crap, she's back!

[HunterGather]

Setlist

1.n
2.drops
3.good worker
4.in due order
5.idle talk
6.clump
7.sever
8.play
9.y
10.rascal
11.t
12.goods




I'd wanna see this indoors or at night, though. And the band needs to not dress like that.
It was prolly hot, but caps and shorts don't fit into the way I want them to perform live, (because it's all about me )

[RageAgainstTheAoki]

Are you ever going to tie it all up in a bow and explain what it all means?

– It gives me a bad taste in my mouth just thinking about it. It’s like sharing your innermost secrets; that’s not particularly attractive for anyone. I don’t think the audience wants that, much less me. It would make me feel extremely naked and exposed.

So glad she said this^. The mystery is part of the charm as far I'm concerned.

As for the live performances, Jonna sounds great live but I still think this concept has limited appeal as a truly live concert experience. Losing the narrative thread and the camera seems to be too much for them to overcome. I think they'd need a truly immersive experience to make this work. If they had some sort of unlimited budget, it would be great to see what they could do working with some talented scenic artist and lighting designer from the opera world. But that would take so much $$$.

[captncrzy]

Plus putting them on in the daytime is just odd.

[HunterGather]

Their next show in a month is at 9.30pm in Germany, so that will hopefully work out better.

Anyhoo, new interview with The Guardian:




In December 2009 a handful of music bloggers received an email from an anonymous account. The email had a link to a YouTube video called – rather snappily – Prelude 699130082.451322-5.4.21.3.1.20.9.15.14.1.12. In it, a naked woman was glimpsed curled up in a swirl of jet-black liquid, intercut with shots of blackened limbs emanating from giant oak trees while a soundtrack of ambient electronica burbled in the background. It turned out to be the first of six Prelude videos, generating a level of online intrigue that big-name pop stars can only dream of.

With each new wonderfully creepy clip came more questions: What did the numerical titles mean? What was the significance of all the animal imagery? Why did the woman seem to be licking semen off a tree? And, most importantly, who on earth was this enigmatic siren? Names bandied about on music forums included high-concept pop stars such as Lady Gaga, Björk and, er, Christina Aguilera.

As it turned out, our mysterious semen-licker was a Swedish singer-songwriter called Jonna Lee, in the process of reinventing herself as iamamiwhoami. Her transformation has been so convincing that, when I arrive to meet her in an ultra-modern west London hotel, it feels most incongruous. We should be in a forest, making pagan symbols out of twigs, surrounded by familiars. But with the lights off and the curtains drawn I find Lee, dressed head-to-toe in black with a shock of white hair, stood peering out of the first floor window at a fox that's curled up outside in the mid-afternoon sun. It stays there for the duration of the interview.

I accuse Lee of summoning it here to keep an eye on us. "Hmm, yes," she says slowly, her blue eyes framed by massive fake blonde eyelashes.

In fact, "Hmm, yes," is Lee's default setting when it comes to ending sentences. This is the first proper interview she's done under the guise of iamamiwhoami, and there's a sense that she'd still rather not give too much away. Questions about various recurring motifs that run throughout Prelude, as well as the Bounty series that followed, and the most recent videos for songs from her forthcoming Kin album, are all politely rebuffed.

I ask her if she sees herself as the same person as the one who released two KT Tunstall-lite solo albums in her native Sweden under her birth name. "I would say I'm the same person, but I guess I've found other sides of myself," she replies. "I'm a happier person. I mean, I don't separate myself from what I do because I'm living it. Hmm, yes."

Lee defines iamamiwhoami as a multimedia "entity" – one which, alongside her and music producer Claes Björklund, includes directors, designers and close friends. Its creation was a way for Lee to submerge herself in her own world, simultaneously inviting her audience to join her while also teasing them with only snippets of information. Her identity wasn't fully revealed until the 12th video, her face initially obscured by make-up and what looked suspiciously like cellophane.

"Leaving space for everyone's imagination to run free is a big part of it," she says, "both in terms of how we communicate and also in not being overly clear what the message is. It's kind of like receiving a script for a movie and reading it while you're watching it." One of the main reasons for this lack of a defining message was the fact that Lee herself didn't really know what she wanted iamamiwhoami to be, hence the moniker. Was she aware of the fuss the early videos caused?

"Yes. It was unavoidable but I just needed to close the door around me and think, 'OK, let's focus on this,' because I needed to develop it as some sort of form. I had to work out if it was reality or a brief moment. I knew that once all the talk had settled, the work would still be there, and I wanted to create a world where I could stay."

While her videos are typically uploaded within weeks of completion, opening up a direct line of communication between artist and audience, there's still a sense of barriers being raised. In November 2010 she let one "lucky" person into her world after appealing to her fans to find a representative to appear in To Whom It May Concern, an hour-long webcast that opened with Lee driving off with the sole audience member in a battered Volvo and performing for him from the top of a man-made pyramid of cardboard boxes before luring him into a coffin and seemingly burning him alive. "It was just the way it had to be, I'm sorry to say," Lee explains. "Now may he rest in peace."

There's a glint in her eye that returns when I tell her I'm concerned about the fact that a black cat that starred in a number of early videos seems to have disappeared. "Everything has its purpose and sometimes things fade away slowly and sometimes they reappear," she purrs.

For all their intellectual posturing – the Prelude videos deal extensively with the myth of the mandragora officinarum, which claims that the semen of a hanged man produces the hallucinatory root – there's humour buried within. In the video for Play, for example, ridiculous-looking yetis dance around with a semi-nude Lee to the song's drip-feed R&B, looking like Hype Williams directing a racy episode of Harry And The Hendersons. Then there's the merchandise. Released to coincide with her debut album Kin, you can now buy iamamiwhoami pants. Apparently this is "a comment regarding the way we consume things" and fits "into what it needs to be for people to grasp it". Is she saying we'll understand where she's coming from once we pull on a pair of her kecks? "I think, definitely," she says. "I can't imagine anything more sexy than that."

Sex seems to be on Lee's mind today, albeit in a typically abstract way. I ask her why she's decided to physically release Kin, given that the songs are already available to buy digitally and the videos have been online since the start of the year. From what I can gather, it's because when she played her first live show in front of an audience at last summer's Way Out West festival, something "happened".

"There was a close encounter with the audience that started the process of making Kin, so I felt that it needed to be touched and held in people's hands," she explains. During the show, Lee writhed around on a giant pile of loo rolls – "It was a bed," she corrects, "assigned for action" – with her back to the audience but looking at a giant screen showing their faces. Lee talks about the album's "physical birth" and the "nine months of hard labour" that it took to create it. Noticing an extended metaphor looming, I suggest that maybe now she should be looking after the baby/album. "The audience needs to care for it." Is she giving it up for adoption? "It's always going to be my baby. I'm a very proud mother. I'm just sharing it."

Given the mythmaking that's surrounded the project, it's testament to how great the songs are that Kin works equally well once stripped of its visuals. Lee's voice is delicate and otherworldly, weaving its way through warm synth blasts and creeping percussion. It's also impressive that she's managed to keep people's attention after that initial thrill of the unknown subsided.

"I wouldn't have done interviews earlier," she says, as we get up to check on the fox. "It would have all looked like a big promotional campaign. I would have been a sad person for a long time. I can't say that I would have been here now. But it's evolved in a way that we can still do it." She pauses. "Hmm, yes."

Kin is out on 10 September

[HunterGather]

They have a live show this weekend that was only announced like less than 2 weeks ago at another festival in Stockholm.

And, new interview with DAZED DIGITAL:

Born in December 2009, iamamiwhoami, like their name suggests, has always remained somewhat a mystery. A spiritual energy floating through the mind of their listeners leaving only symbolic debris to decipher their messages with. Behind the mysterious lyrics and soft electronic nuances lie Swedish singer-songwriter Jonna Lee and producer Claes Bjorklund. A cult following studies their every move, as drawings of animals, emblematic videos, locks of blonde hair sent to MTV’s James Montgomery and other clues surface. Dazed went straight to the source to speak to the driving force behind the project.

DD: Could you tell me more about the visual aspect of the album and your videos?
iamamiwhoami: Working the way we do, it’s always been about telling what’s in the creative mind and also the people that follow it. Everything has been done in real time so every time a production starts, it’s being released very soon after to keep the conversation with the audience in the present. It’s a chronological storyline of an evolution, from the very beginning up to now. I think the Internet is the place where you can do that. Kin is tying those two works together in the sense that it’s a physical thing that you can touch also.

DD: You talk about this strong connection that you have with your audience, how do you hope to ‘embrace’ them with your music?
iamamiwhoami: I feel like it’s an on going conversation and I hope they become more through it. There’s space enough for them to interpret and continue a pattern that’s been started. I’m hoping that even though everything is not literally spelled out that its still being understood.

DD: If you were to live 100 years in the future and any form of technology was possible, what would you do to connect with your audience on a deeper level?
iamamiwhoami: I’m already doing that with Kin and enjoy using technology although incorporating touch with sound would be incredible. Blending the physical with the digital might one day exist in the future, hopefully.

DD: You’ve also released the album on your own label – To Whom It May Concern. What drove you to do this?
iamamiwhoami: The name speaks for itself, it came from the whole project which is it’s own entity in some ways. There needs to be no creative boundaries to do what you have to do and to be that free. It was just a natural continuation of how to share what we are doing. We had to challenge ourselves to see what we could do with very little.

DD: And what can we hope to hear from you in the future?
iamamiwhoami: There’s a lot of communication from me all the time even though it’s not literal.

[HunterGather]

They did a show this weekend. Definitely looks better without the sun blasting.
Still think they should do something with that cube. Like project pictures or video in/on it, rather than just colors.

[sonofhal]

Bought tix to see her in Oct. Should be interesting, if nothing else.

[HunterGather]

Ah yes, they have a UK gig soon.

Interview with Clash Music:

You’ve said in interviews that you initially concealed your identity because you weren’t sure what you wanted iamamiwhoami to be. How did you feel when you finally revealed who you where?
I wanted to create undisturbed away from the noise together with my collaborators. It was necessary to work in the quiet for iamamiwhoami to be able to continue to have a life. My identity was not hidden but neither articulated by me because what is relevant is the work we have done and the audience reflection of my identity.

Why is it important to retain an element of mystery?
There is no need for over articulation. Our audience is clever and I know their capacity. Their interpretations of what we do shape the course of the story.

Do you regard yourself as a performance artist, musical artist, video artist or artist?
I’m leaving that up to others to articulate.

You seem to be fascinated by the ephemeral and the fluid - in structures, identities and also sonically. Is this how you interpret the world?
Challenging the conventional shape is necessary. The fluid brings new life.

In your videos you explore the grotesque, carnivalesque and the uncanny – where do these images and ideas come from?
The instinctive human behaviour is fascinating to me as well as to my collaborators. So is raw emotion as well as no emotion. The contradictions in our nature are many.
In the Bounty series there’s a dramatic juxtaposition between the natural and the manmade.

Was this a conscious decision?
Yes. They represent two different realities.

Is the visual aspect as important to you as the musical element? Are the two separable?
The music is our foundation. The visualization of the music is an extension of it. Blending them together they create a new way of communicating for me. ‘kin’ can be experienced either sonically, visually or merged depending on what is preferred.

Can you tell us about the dancing yeti in ‘Sever’? Is it an exploration of self and other, or something completely different?
It represents a part of me and most others. Life with it is very much a delight. I have experienced the consequence of living without it. Which has the greater cost?

Do you ever throw in motifs, themes and images for the sheer hell of it, or does everything have significance?
Everything has its purpose. Sometimes the simplest setting can have the greatest meaning. What meaning my purpose has to you will differentiate in proportion I suppose.

What are stranger, your dreams or your video art?
It’s often difficult telling dream from reality I find.

What inspires you?
The world we have built around iamamiwhoami is solid. I feed off of that. Working without creative boundaries is a prerequisite for iamamiwhoami. That takes me places.

There seems to be a lot great experimental electronica and avant-garde-inspired music coming out of Scandinavia at the moment – Fever Ray, Jenny Hval, Hanne Hukkelberg… Why do you think this is?
The northerners are breaking out of their shells I think. So likeminded people that have similar references share their good work.

You’ve described ‘kin’ as your child, the result of 9 months hard labour. Will you love your next child in the same way?
All my creations are all equal to me. The question is - who is its next of kin?

----------

And photo from upcoming interview with WIRED:

[HunterGather]

They've done a lot of interviews in magazines in the past month, but I didn't post because they were more or less the same.
But here's some interesting stuff from a recent one:

How did iamamiwhoami really start? Maybe Jonna Lee wasn’t satisfied with her own career and needed a change?

It was sprung from experiencing convention in its purest form. There was a foundation of songs that had to be able to grow freely. I tore the formerly by its roots and started over. To physically visualize the songs has been an aim since long. I began experimenting with our visual collaborators.

When you recorded the tracks in the studio did you have a clear idea of how it had to sound, or did it come with the studio process?

The idea of “kin” started growing at our first live show in 2011 as is reflected in “; john” and “clump”. Its sound was the first to develop when the creative process began. It was created chronologically. “bounty” was created as it was shared, episode by episode.

Why haven’t you included any tracks prior to “sever” (for example “; john” and “clump”) on “kin”? Is there a possibility they might be released on a physical format in the future?

They are not a part of “kin”. They are the epilogue of the “bounty” and have a relevance in their own time.

Do you think you made a big step with “; john” and “clump”?

A lot of people consider them two of the best tracks/videos. I feel equal warmth for all our work. It is what it is: sprung from necessity.

In November 2010, we had the opportunity to enjoy “In Concert”. How long did it take to record it? And what was the most difficult aspect of the process?

“In Concert” was 1 hour and 4 minutes long. We prepared carefully for that night and our forest showed its better sides. Time was of an essence. Sometimes a good worker has to be willing to lose it all. And so he did.

Do you have a big budget or are your ideas limited to a specific, smaller budget?

During the first years of running To Whom It May Concern there was none at all. Now the work we have done has made it possible to continue even though it means working with limited means. The motives to why you are creating become very clear and that is something we value.

--------

A lot of her answers are vague and even though she's not her "character", she still kind of is in these interviews she's done.

[sonofhal]

It wasn't very good. Livened up a bit towards the end when the light show kicked in, but I was nodding off by then.

If her concept is to not hold your interest, then top marks.

[amyzzz]

Maybe she should make an album of lullabies for insomniacs and children instead.

[HunterGather]

Yeah, but I still wanna see them.

They were on BBC doing a live session+interview.



Live songs and audio interview:



This yt video has Play and Goods, but they also did Kill and Idle Talk.

[HunterGather]

Their "BOUNTY" physical album will finally be released.
I hope that phone song ends up on there.



Also, iamamiwhoami is now on The Windish Agency, a booking agency that covers territories in America (US, Canada, Mexico and South America).

[Neighborhood Creep]

I can't stop staring at her crotch^

[HunterGather]

Lame. The cd/dvd won't have those unreleased songs or any of the interludes.

But still, a physical release.




And a new date in London

[HunterGather]

They posted a new short video.
In the vid description, they list some shows coming up this summer in Europe.
Still no U.S. shows yet. I feeeeel like maybe sometime this year...

20130519 - Razzmatazz, Barcelona
20130530 - Brixton Electric, London
20130601 - Forbidden fruit festival, Dublin
20130712 - Pohoda festival, Trencin
20130719 - Melt! festival, Ferropolis
20130721 - Latitude, Southwold




Oh, also, the trailer for the Bounty cd/dvd.

[clumsy342]

As much as I'd love to see them, I seriously doubt they'd play in Portland. God, I hope I'm wrong.