Empress Of Offers Salvation

Empress Of has an affinity for working in isolation. Her debut album “Me” was made over the course of a month spent alone in Mexico, while this time around she moved into Sonic Ranch — the world’s largest residential recording studio complex. Located on a pecan farm in the border town of Tornillo, Texas, she says that many of the residential engineers were confused as to why on earth she had come completely alone, used to seeing a team of musicians and helpers arriving together on site. But the flip side of self-inflicted isolation is the vulnerable internal dialogue it stimulated for the artist— a concentrated iteration of the depth and rawness she has conveyed through classic pop sounds, eclectic inspirations and cutting lyrics since her start.

In the world of Empress Of, geography isn’t just a physical space, but a character that pulsates within the music. She considers this musical relationship to location and travel to be an exercise in recontextualization — a greater theme that plays a huge role in her process. By consciously changing the locations in which she works, she effectively forces herself to approach existing ideas and feelings in new ways, letting the organism that is setting and place to play a decisive and often subliminal role in her creative process.

Tell me about the making of this EP.

I like to make music in many different ways, but one of my favorite ways is to travel somewhere and like, have that be a part of the story. I love traveling different places and writing music in different elements. So for “Save Me” I went to Tornillo, Texas, which is like on the border of Mexico and Texas and the recording studio I went to used to be a border patrol jail. It was crazy. And you could feel the like ghost energy, it was just intense. Yeah. And it was also a farm, it was a pecan farm. So there were beautiful stories and visuals throughout —riding pickup trucks in the desert and like, you know, walking around a giant pecan farm. And making music by myself in a recording studio for two weeks is so idyllic. So amazing and such a privilege to be able to make music like that. That's how “Save Me” came about. And for some other songs on the record, I worked with my friend BJ Burton and Jim-E Stack.

What was it like making music at Sonic Ranch, how did the geography specifically affect your writing and music making process?

That specific desert was just so intense because it was on the border of Mexico. And I had just gone, like I had just gone through a breakup and I was in this farm by myself and it was, it was cool. I felt very in my element, you know? Going to the studio. They just like throw you a pair of keys to a pickup truck and you drive yourself to the studio every day. So I'm like driving around this, this farm on a pickup truck, listening to cassettes. It was just very romantic. And I've written like tons of songs about love but to me this project has a different energy than any of my other music. It sounds way more confident, way more horny, way more feminine. Did you go into the project with some sort of thesis statement? The last song on the EP is called “Cry For Help.” And I was looking at the vinyl and the first song is “Save Me.” And the last song is cry for help. And when I saw this I was like, wow, there's such a full circle element to this project, of just like, wanting to be healed. I make a joke about like healing girl summer a lot, instead of hot girl summer, because instead of focusing on how much someone hurt me, I want to just heal.

I feel like that should just be an inherent part of each summer and every month.

I know, but sometimes you need a hot girl summer sometimes, It’s all about the balance. Yeah, that’s one of the nice things about getting older, you get to know yourself better and figure out that balance. Like this is my chaos phase and this is my healing phase.

So now you're in your healing phase for this project?

Yeah, pretty much.

Speaking of phases, how have your past projects influenced this one?

The reason I’m putting this EP out is because it's like an in between step from my last album “I’m Your Empress Of” to the next album I eventually put out which will be my fourth. It’s gonna be like a big fucking deal, so I wanna have just a stepping stone sonically and songwriting wise. And EP’s are fun because every song is almost like a single, so it’s really just about trimming the fat. There aren’t interludes or vibes or moods — just songs.

You recently went independent, what’s that been like?

It's been a learning process. Learning to have a lot of faith in myself cause I'm like investing a lot of my own money into things like the technical and backend stuff. So I just have to be a bit more intentional now about what I’m doing.

Who are some artists that inspired this EP?

Robyn for sure. And for the strings and stuff, just listening to records with really sick string arrangements. Also 70s and 80s disco, a lot of disco — the EP is very dance based.

Something I really admire about your work is how you’re able to strike a great balance between pop, concept, and experimental sensibilities.

I feel like it's because I never fully go in one specific direction, so I’m inspired by so many different types of music, like Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, loads of pop and dance music, Ryuichi Sakamoto. I just love so many different kinds of music. I would find it hard to make very genre specific music, and I think that that definitely comes out in my music and is what makes it interesting.

But you aren’t pretentious about your eclecticism, it really feels authentic. You’ll bring up Julee Cruise, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Ariana Grande in the same breath. There isn’t any elitism to it. 

It’s such a strange time in music because everyone’s attention spans sucks. I miss music that captivates for minutes at a time, you know? Instead of 15 seconds, 30 seconds. It’s funny, I had a little bit of fear with “Save Me” because it has this slow intro, but it’s a pop song. It’s got a weird melody, but it’s very much like Brittany. So I was a little scared for it to be the first single because of the general lack of patience in this day and age. But, somehow people still listen to it. I'm super lucky to have that, but it’s interesting to be an artist that doesn’t make homogenous music necessarily.

How are you able to translate these varying inspirations into your own work?

I just like learning. And I like how not knowing how to use something can make you do things you haven't done before. So like accessing new gear kind of makes me write new songs like that. I wouldn’t have written before. It's just like the freshness of learning something new, hearing your voice through a different reverb that you've never used before, hearing your voice on a microphone that you've never heard your before. It forces myself to think of music differently. So as I get older and continue to make records in this way, I wanna discover new ways of making music. It’s interesting because most analog gear stems from broadcasting in the forties, for the sole purpose of broadcasting. So when you put a synthesizer though like a broadcasting board you’re giving it a new purpose, a new life. So all the sounds become recontextualized.

You make a great point about recontextualization, and I think that it’s a good analogy for your music and process in general. It seems to me that an integral part of Empress Of is that act of recontextualization. Recontexualizing your inspirations, your influences, your gear, your themes and feelings, the settings you work in. You channel the power of the “child at play.” Opening yourself to new and disparate worlds, using naivety to your advantage. 

Absolutely. I've written a bunch of love songs, but what makes this project different from the others is that the feeling has been recontextualized to reflect my present self.