Pigeon Spins Featuring an Interview with Brynne

Brynne - Dark EP

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Interview with Brynne

(•)> What inspired the creation of your EP DARK, and how does it reflect your evolving sound?

Sonics, sounds, explored by Prod. Bryan inspired us venturing into darker sounds and thus themes around perceptions of darkness, how necessarly it is to have those elements within us, and how beautiful and transformative the dark can be. I would say that's the evolution of self that I had been on in writing, so the sound evolves as we do as people who feel, hurt, love, and grow.

(•)> How did your five-year collaboration with Bryan Christopher shape the music and storytelling?

Working with Bryan for five years created and continues to create a garden of experimentation, trust and freedom as we have found and continue to explore sound and storytelling together. I think what’s special about our collaboration is that there’s never really a push back; Bryan is free to create in completeness what he feels and then shares it and the I do the same and we simply accept whatever gets created. We rarely change anything.

(•)> Can you describe the themes behind tracks like Territories and Outsider?

The project itself is thematically about our explorations of the word or idea of darkness. Territories was written about boundaries, within the pursuit of love, that come from the pursuit of self. Sonically it was the first song Bryan wrote that has this darker, industrial, gloomy sounding guitar. The drums are super simple and kind of eerie; it was our introduction to darker sounds to explore between us. Outsider, was written only a month before the release of the project, the music leans into a feeling of dark spaces, after hours, darkness as more of an atmosphere.

(•)> How do you blend darkness in production, instrumentation, and vocal arrangement to create a unique atmosphere?

It’s in the energy between Bryan and myself; his instrumentation leads me to what story I want to tell

(•)> Which artists or influences had the biggest impact on your sound for this EP?

What’s interesting is that the EP is pulling from songs written years apart. So I wasn’t listening to specific artists during the recording process of each song, but during during the mixes I was listening to a lot of Fiona Apple, Massive Attack, Cocteau Twins, and Billie Holiday. Really inspired by the vocal stacking, the darker atmospheric tones and the richness of any singular vocal performances.

(•)> How does your background from Compton and life in Los Angeles inform your music?

I think what’s interesting for my story in being from Compton is how insular my experience was growing up there. Having a relationship with Compton is so much more about having a relationship with different interiors like my house, my grandmas house, my mom’s car, my dad’s office. These spaces that felt like safety, so that my imagination and my love of singing could be as free as it wanted to be. I think living in LA as an adult, my base is still with that importance; that my interior world is rich with my dreams and then that way the City can become as beautiful as it is to me.

I actually think the music gets informed by my push pull relationship in growing in Compton. I wasn’t always as proud to be from there as I am as an adult. I think it’s because I was a very shy little girl and didn’t go outside, so my love for Compton is more about interior spaces that shaped me, like my house, my grandmas house, my moms car, my dads office, my aunts kitchen. I was always a watcher of what was happening in the neighborhood, at school, at the parks. This theme of being on the periphery is a pivotal component to and within the songwriting, as well as just my identity. And living in Los Angeles as an adult, has simply provided more texture to that experience. But both places have my heart, my respect and my honor in calling them home.

(•)> What role do archetypes, cinema, and stillness play in your creative process?

Archetypes and cinema are two side of the same coin for me. I write about archetypes, specifically ones we find in film. I also love to view archetypal patterns in others, and myself, as a way to zoom out and see a person, see ourselves from a wider sense. From a perspective that allows for the mythology of a person and then I enjoy putting that into poetry with music. Stillness is a part of that work; and I just love the way the word looks, and what it provokes. It asks you, to become, in a moment, with me. How beautiful is that!

(•)> How did working with producers like Art Zavala Jr. enhance the final sound of DARK?

Art Zavala Jr. an incredible singer/songwriter/producer/guitarist/sound engineer, has played a crucial role in my journey to being an artist and influenced my approach to the sacredness of getting the sound right, but he was not involved in DARK specifically.

(•)> How do you balance introspection with accessibility to connect with a diverse audience?

I have a saying, “I want to give, without giving myself away”. So I can give you the words that I fished out from the depths of my experiences around love, heartbreak, sex, self destruction, rebuild, but I don’t have to let you know those songs are about those things exclusively. Because at the end of the day the listener will orchestrate how that song lives with them; the voice is mine, the meaning belongs to them. Letting this be in my head and heart, feels like the most balanced way I can go about diverse connectivity, and my authenticity.

(•)> What do you hope listeners take away emotionally and experientially from this EP?

I actually only have one request to folks when I introduce the project to them and that is that, they listen to it for the first time in the dark. I hope that by having that curation, that is the sensory experience, and that, that will bring them to whatever emotions one feels when we sit, still, in the dark and listen.