Week in Pop: Crying, Infinity Shred, The Olympians

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Femme Vanille

Femme Vanille's talented creative force Karindra Perrier; press photo courtesy of the artist.
Femme Vanille’s talented creative force Karindra Perrier; press photo courtesy of the artist.

Behold the Karindra Perrier, Gijs Knol & Rinkie Bartels video for Femme Vanille’s grand ballad “Another Time” found off the album of the same name that truly will take you back to another place & era. Blending footage found from the Prelinger Archives & The British Film Institute; Karindra Perrier steers their sonic ship to new ports, tiers & piers to explore new terrains.

The mystic quality of Femme Vanille is represented in the visuals of timeless images cut between the compiled & edited film footage of the group. Karindra guides the group through rich swathes of sound that feel as if they were dreamed up from another place or time unbeknownst to mere mortal minds & mapped geography. “Another Time” embodies everything the title states & more operating on a grand arrangement that is on par with the most richly developed & produced conceptual works of all time. Karindra provided us with the following exclusive reflective preface on the making of the album, song & video for “Another Time”:

The album Another Time was recorded at studio The Church. As you’d expect, this is a beautiful studio built inside an old Dutch church. It has an amazing reverb and is stuffed with so many many fantastic instruments. It’s a musicians Valhalla.

You can really hear the reverb of the church in these songs, for instance on the song ‘Save Me’. And many of the instruments we found there were used: we love layers! In the song Another Time you can find Erik Brouwer playing the Philicorda (a small organ by Philips). You can also hear the sweet sound of a dulcitone in the chorus. And we have Jesse Buitenhuis rocking a banjo. All of those instruments and layers bring a characteristic to the sound. And let’s not forget the ‘echo magic’ from our producer David Hoogerheide. Let him turn some seemingly random knobs and he blows your mind!

I try to give all my songs their own character, while at the same time forming a whole. For instance we have the weird 11-beat groove of “Bird”. For this track I scavenged through my parents shed for anything that might have a cool sound when hitting it. Together with our drummer Thijs Bastiaans we put together a layered groove with scrap metal, biscuit tins, an Indonesian rattle, and dancing chickpeas on the drumheads. It became one of my favorite tracks of the album.

I could go on and on about these songs, how we made them, what they are about. We had such a great time building this record. I simply hope you can hear our hearts beating when listening to it.