Breaking Free with REI AMI

Tell me about the album title, before/after.

It's always a little tricky to figure out a record title. I don't think it's supposed to be super conceptual or anything like that, but they're two words that I felt constantly confronted by. They're everywhere. Every way that we measure time is tethered to these two states of what came before or after a certain event. 

How is this project a development from your last record?

All of my records are hyper-personal. It's the subject I feel most comfortable writing about. But in the previous records, I've always made an effort to lyrically remain within the surreal. [This time], there are certain things that I just decided to spell out that aren't really veiled at all. 

But I don't know, I feel like the implication is that something had to have progressed, but I feel like maybe the only thing that has progressed is time. 

That's really poetic.

Maybe.

What was the process for developing this album?

I wish there was something cooler I could say at this point in time, but it really just is writing songs, and deciding are they going to make the cut for the record or not? I wish it sounded a little more glamorous and exciting than that.

But I did have the chance to work on three of the songs with producers I hadn't worked with before. I branched out. So, this record isn't entirely self-produced.

Do you normally prefer doing it by yourself, or is it just how it falls together?

It's kind of how it happens. Each song is different, but I have a clear idea of how I want the final product to sound. I think that's perhaps one reason I'm so involved. I think it would be different if I were a singer, and I would be like, "Okay, show me something. Here's kind of the vibe that I want." But, I think if you come to songwriting or producing from a musician's perspective, it's really hard to just hand it off to somebody. 

How come you don't describe yourself as a singer? 

Well, I think there's a lot of people that I enjoy who sing that aren't necessarily singers. Like, I love Gary Wilson, Lou Reed, Elliott Smith. So, I think it really depends. It's what I started doing last. So, you know, I've been playing maybe guitar for like seven years. I don't consider myself a guitar player. I think it's a means to an end.

How does it feel to reflect on your music with the distance of time?

I don't know. I mean, maybe this is also a good way of answering how a record can be put together. But my selection for the album ends up primarily being, what are the songs that I will feel comfortable still being confronted by or having to perform two years down the line? 

So, do you find you get sick of your songs, then?

One hundred percent. There are songs that I wrote for this record that I was really excited by that just didn't make the cut. They're still good songs. I just don't want to be performing them. I don't want to be confronted with them anymore. 

Does it irritate you when people listen to albums on shuffle?

No, because I have only shuffled the songs and put them into that order. That too is just a shuffle. If you want to shuffle them differently, absolutely go for it. I feel tortured by having to submit the track list, especially as people aren't consuming a whole record. This is what I've seen from my last records: people tend to listen to the first four or five, and then if they were a single, they will get a lot of plays. You can see in the metrics. So, that ends up factoring into my decision. I think the ability to have a long intro is over. It bums me out.

How do you feel about touring? 

I like it. It's expensive. I think the only downside if you're an indie musician touring and paying everybody fairly and travel costs have gone up, this kind of stuff. But other than that, I love it. It's a joy to perform music.

Yeah, I’m sure. Do you like seeing the fans? 

Absolutely. It's really nice to put faces to what otherwise feels quite arbitrary, or like shouting into the void with releasing music.

Do you have particular songs that people like to see live?

Yeah,  Baker Miller Pink  is a huge fan favourite.  Klein Marx  does really well, especially in France, which is funny because it's a German song about how I want to kill myself, but I don't think they know what it means, so they really love it. 

How do you feel about the label of pop music? Because I know you've said something about being too indie for pop and too pop for the art world.

Yeah, I think it's hard. I think it is exactly that.

I think, unfortunately, even the indie and the underground is being pantomimed or played into, to a point where it feels performative. We live in postmodernity. There's a lot of pseudo-counterculture signalling going on, and it's just not actually punk.

And I think it's interesting… you know, I'm not really trying to be much of anything. I think that an interesting point in art is when you make use of the fact that you live in postmodern times. 

So, there are a lot of different styles that will play an influence in the type of music that I make, but it's not trying to be anything. I think that's always interesting when it's something that does feel unique to the person or special kind of in its own way. And I don't know if there's too much room for that. So, I think it's always interesting to see kind of what performs well in today's day and age, and then try to figure out why. 

Does the psychology of that interest you, then?

Of course. And, when I look at how things are marketed, I think those things are interesting. I love that there's this element of gambling involved in it. Some things are really unpredictable. But then, you know what? A lot of things aren't. Like, I was at a music conference in October and, it was really fun. The next day, I was asked to speak on a panel about artists in the age of social media. I was there as an indie artist on an indie label. It wasn't just artists. It was also people who worked in the industry. There was one A&R who was talking about a band who had also been nominated for the same prize I'd been nominated for the previous year, which is like a rising-star prize. And he was like, "Well, it was so amazing, because we experienced so much organic growth." 

And I was like, "Okay, so how do you define organic growth?” 

He was like, "Well, we just did these activations for the record. We weren’t buying followers. We weren't buying views. We were putting on activations for the record. They were playing on a boat, and we invited 500 people down for free." Like, okay, but that stuff still costs money.

It hasn't really changed much with music being a marketable product. I think people within the industry are far too quick to say that things are organic. Like, okay, yeah, you're not buying views from a streaming farm in Guangzhou, but you're creating an activation... You know what I mean? 

I know artists who maybe have a trending sound on TikTok, but then that's unable to translate into actual streams, actual album sales, actual concert sales. I don't think there is this rosy-cheeked idea that if you're just really talented, it's gonna work out. I don't think that's really been the reality for a very long time. And look, I'm not against it. I'm not some social media pariah, you know? It's not ostracising myself from the landscape of music that we're currently in. It's just hard for me to sometimes negotiate how I feel about having to witness certain things.

But yeah, talking about promotion being organic, if you're promoting it, it's not truly organic. 

Yeah, it's not. 

And that's not a bad thing.

No, it's totally fine. Like, I think it's lovely that there's labels out there throwing money at artist development. I think that's great. But I think if music is being consumed as a product, it should be marketed as one. But then don't say it's organic growth. It's just factually incorrect.

100%, that makes sense. Do you like promoting?

It really depends. I'm trying to get better at it. I am sporadically active on my social media, which, I think doesn't really help the case.

I go through phases—I think it's so fun to be able to execute quick video ideas, and it's such a cool medium. I am just not regular with it in any semblance of the way, and that's not rewarded, right?

It must feel like you almost have to be an influencer.

You think?

You know, I met a really lovely girl at End of the Road Festival last year. And she does about five TikToks a day. And they're cute, but there's so many that I could just never do. Like, "If you like this artist, go check out my music." 

It's not for everyone, though… Like, I feel like it’s the worst situation.

Totally. Like, I couldn't delete my social media. I couldn't do that. That kind of... that's kind of a bummer. 

No, it's a shame. It becomes such an important part of life, for anyone—music or not.

Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous, but [it’s] just the way it is, I guess. 

Would you like it to change?

I wish websites were more of a thing, you know? When I first joined the internet, everybody had their own website. You could just click through a library of different domains. That was really fun. 

Also, everybody owned their own website, so it's not like you were on platforms owned by creepy billionaires. 

No, I mean, the internet changes so rapidly. It's unfathomable, really. Because not many people would have their own website now unless it's for a professional reason.

Yeah. Well, I have one.

That's good, though. People should have more websites.

Yeah, but why wouldn't you have a website, you know?

Oh, well, I do have a website, darling. I do.

[Laughing] Okay, cool.

It’s crazy really. How does all the information get processed? How is it even possible?

Wasn't it that, like, “We are confronted in a day with as much decision-making as a Victorian adult was confronted with in their whole lifetime”?

[Laughing] You Know, I feel like I know the answer, but do you like listening to your own music?

Yeah.

Okay, really?

Were you surprised by that answer?

I thought you were going to say, "No, I don't like listening to it."

No, I think you're doing something really wrong if you don't like listening to your own music.

It's not like that's exclusively what I listen to, and especially after making a record, spending a significant amount of time with it, that can then get tedious.

But I enjoyed listening to it, and there were phases where—and I'm sure once I start touring again, I've had a very deliberate break from listening to it, and I'm sure once I start touring and playing the songs, I'll be really happy to play them because I am really proud of them.

So, I think if you're not able to enjoy and listen to your own music, you're doing something wrong. Don't make music. How do you expect other people to listen to it if you can't even listen to it?