STACK June 2016 Issue 140

105 / 105

You DJ’d at South By Southwest this
year; how was it different to your
former experiences participating in
the festival with Dum Dum Girls?
KRISTIN KONTROL: I’ve been to
SXSW in, like, the more traditional band
experience at least ten times in my
life at this point. It’s generally really
chaotic and you’re running around and
schlepping gear. [This time] I DJ’d the
opening party for South by South West,
the official one. That was pretty early
in the evening, the sun was still out, it
was very fun. I’m very selfish about
it. I’m playing music I know people will
enjoy but ultimately just music I feel
like playing. The most fun just from the
fan perspective was Gorilla vs Bear, and
Charlie XCX was headlining. I just DJ’d
two short sets in between the people
before her and then I watched her
perform from side stage.
About your move from personifying
Dee Dee (in Dum Dum Girls) to this
new solo persona of Kristin Kontrol,
you’ve said “it got weird that I was
keeping so much of myself out of
what I was doing creatively.”Was
thaht a lengthy evolution?
I think it was a gradual thing, and
I also think it took me a long time to
recognise things. It was about eight
or nine years ago I started, and I just
wanted to be anonymous, and it was
purely a recording project. Eventually
I had to put a band together. I need to
[find a persona for] myself, or whoever
was fronting the band. So I chose my
mum’s name, which is my unofficial
middle name. It was really good and
really helpful because I was pretty
nervous about going out on my own.
I’d played in bands for years, but never
written my own song. So for a long time
it served me, because it kind of gave
me like a protective thing – because I
was playing a character, it was easier for
me to be on stage. I’ve had pretty bad
stage fright my whole life. So anybody
who had met me in the last two years
called me Dee Dee and then my friends
and family called me Kristin, so there
was just this weird potential personality
split thing happening. Then, I think, the
last couple of years working and touring,
I started feeling like I am myself, and
this is the role that I must step into do
to this. It just started feeling like both
the music and the persona were – I’d
outgrown them. I didn’t need the
security of distancing myself.
The titular single from the album
has a reallyTori Amos feel with the
tightening of vibrato and vocal fry,
and then bursts into this super-
sweeping poppy chorus. How did you
write that awesome chorus melody?
God, I wish I could remember.
Honestly, I get in such a zone and I don’t
really have a formula in terms of building
it bit by bit. Usually the song happens
on a more minimal level, so I would
just use the guitar and the the piano,
playing around with chords. I knew that
I wanted to play around a lot with the
vocal melodies on this record. For the
first time in my life, as a professional
musician, take advantage of the fact
that I had come from a more classical
background. But for X-Communicate, I
think my idea was Girls Just Wana Have
Fun? I wanted a big, full-on melody
that had a bit of a descending line or
whatever.
Apparently you had more than 62
discrete songs to sift through when
it came time to pick the album’s
tracklist. How did that go?
It was a mix. If there were elements
of the song that were good they could
maybe be the verse for another song,
but if the song itself felt weak to me,
but maybe lyrically there was something
worth salvaging, I would pull that.
I’m in the process of packing up my
apartment and moving, and I just found
this stack of 200 sheets of handwritten
paper and all these books. – those
were my copies of notes that I never
referenced, it’s my thought process that
I just ignored, because I was onto the
next thing.
The collaborative film between Dum
Dum Girls and Bret Easton Ellis (for
AreYou OK? from the album TooTrue ,
2014) was a fascinating project – did
you have any cross-media inspiration
for X-Communicate?
[Are You OK?] was definitely my
first foray into anything outside of just
the traditional music video world. It
was really cool. There is definitely a
part of me that wants to get into that
stuff, but for the most part if I am
pulling from non-music [inspirations]
it’s typically literature and poetry more
than anything else. I do watch a lot of
films and I do love them, but I don’t
think I take intentional influence from
them, it’s probably more subconscious.
I was, of course, one of the Twin
Peaks-obsessive people and the music
was a huge component of that. One of
the producers for this record, Andrew
Miller, he does [film scores] and so
he did little things, to try to get into
that area more. I’m just waiting for
somebody to ask me.
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