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| Photo by Paul Vargas |
No release of the past year has struck a more
powerful emotional chord with us than highandfragile’s debut outing, an EP
called I Was Not Well. The
four track digital version was put out by the artist, Oakland’s Breannyn
deLongis, in the closing days of 2016. She followed up with a very limited
cassette edition including a bonus track this past June. The EP features drums
by Adam Jennings and production and backing vocals from Kristina Esfandiari of
San Francisco’s King Woman.
Some might chatacterize I Was Not Well as dark or negative. There is plenty of angst here,
and not every moment of the EP is easy to listen to. For us, however, the sound
of Breannyn bravely making art out of a woundedness and vulnerability that we
connect with is glorious and, in its own way, uplifting. There have been days
when we’ve listened to I Was Not Well over and over, finding each passage
through this set of songs thrilling and somehow different from the others.
Rare is music so whole and powerful that it
doesn’t so much stimulate this or that feeling as it magnifies the underlying
capacity to feel altogether. Hearing music of this kind, we feel anything and
everything; we get the sense we are experiencing the full spectrum of emotion,
joy and sadness and anger and more, all at once. While feeling so fully can be
overwhelming, it is also healing and relieving.
For us, highandfragile is this rare kind of music.
We therefore feel especially privileged to present the following depthful
interview, one of the most emotionally candid ones we’ve ever presented. Our
gratitude goes out to Breannyn for the care and dedication that putting this
piece together has required. We eagerly anticipate the upcoming releases that
Breannyn describes at the close of the interview.
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| Photo by Mary Manning |
From
our perspective it’s as if you’ve suddenly materialized with a powerful,
singular sound and artistic voice already developed—but we realize that’s
probably not very accurate. Could you fill us in a bit on your musical past and
development?
I have been fighting being a "musician"
for so long. My dad did sound for a touring grunge band when I was a baby so I
wound up growing up around a bunch of band dudes with ripped jeans, long hair
and drinking problems. I grew up watching them all lose their families, minds
and whatever semblance of a life they had. By the time I could make "life
decisions" I knew I loved music and words but I also knew that I desired
the stability that I hadn’t witnessed as a child and concluded that being a
musician did not coincide with my stable real world aspirations.
I was endlessly frustrated because I couldn’t
focus long enough to sit and type or write out a story. I could
tell you a great story, but I didn’t have the patience to write it down for
you. Adding a rhythmic and droning aspect like guitar helped coax the words out
of me in a more natural and soothing way. At some point
I couldn’t deny how important making music and art had become in my everyday
life. I had to get over my fear of the future not working out because without
being able to make music there was no possibility for a healthy future for me.
Music and art slowly took over every part of my life and without them it’s hard
to function. It’s a very hard process to explain but it has been lifelong.
I remember this moment so vividly. I was at work
counting money and a friend called my name while holding a box of sparkling
water in her arms. The box read "high and fragile" and she was
excitedly pointing to it and exclaiming, "This is you." I had already
been recording demos for this specific project at that time and had been
thinking of a name for myself and “highandfragile” was the almost perfect
caption for where I was in life at that point, so the name stuck.
The
emotional tone of I Was Not Well is
both super charged and very distinctive, playing an important role in setting
the project and the EP apart. Would you comment on what this material expresses
on the emotional level?
A desperate attempt at finding peace in myself. I
had started to lose a lot of friends to suicide and the effects of mental
illness and was living in Oakland surrounded by a very large and mentally ill
homeless population so the fear of falling to the wrong side of the extremely thin
line that I had been walking for a long time became real. Our minds are so
fragile and so many of us take our mental stability for granted. A series of
unfortunate events could send many people over the edge and going over the edge
is a really scary thing when you can’t conceive of anyone being there to catch
you. I saw it every day when I looked out my bedroom window and saw people
sleeping in the park. Here I was inside of my bedroom that I paid for with a
job I could barely hold on to looking at my possible future if I couldn’t find
a way to keep my shit together. This EP was my attempt at holding on to my
sanity and being able to function better in society.
Can
you tell us about the scream (or maybe it’s more of a howl)
at 1:56 on the first track of the EP, “Happy Birthday”? It’s primal
and wonderful, and it’s the perfect sound at the perfect moment in that track.
Does that scream have a backstory you’d share with us?
That scream was everything I felt after seeing the
person I loved with another person for the first time after holding on to the
idea of us for what seemed like forever. I sat by the water and rocked myself
until I calmed down enough to make my way home after the encounter. I wanted to
scream then but my inhibitions were still too strong.
Kristina
Esfandiari, front person of the wonderfully intense and lovely San Francisco
doom project King Woman, played a production role on I Was Not Well. Can you tell us about your working process with her
and what kind of contribution she made?
Kristina was the one who heard my demos and forced
me to put them out in to the world. She likes to help people help themselves.
She acted as a coach and sometimes came in the vocal booth with me and helped
me get through recording parts I was having trouble with. She was a
professional hand of guidance who showed me how to function in a studio and
sometimes did backup vocals when she heard a part for a song that I didn’t. She
helped me with the nuances.
The
backing vocals are great, at times very haunting, very unique, and augment the
lead vocals in a way that’s strange and perfect. How many tracks feature
backing vocals from Kristina? Did you do some of the backing vocals yourself as
well?
I remember hearing once that Elliott Smith didn’t
like the sound of his own voice so he experimented a lot with harmonies to feel
better. I hated my voice a lot when I first started singing so most of the
demos I’ve recorded have harmony ideas floating throughout them. I went into
the studio with those in mind and Kristina would hear things that I didn’t and
add harmonies on to mine. Eventually our voices kind of melded and at this
point I almost don’t know whose vocals are whose.
There’s
an untitled bonus track at the end of the cassette, not included in the
download, that’s in a different mode from the rest of the material. Would you
like to tell us something about that piece?
I recorded that song at 3 AM in my
soundproofed closet with buckets and pans for drums specifically for the tape
release because I wanted to give away a piece of myself with the tape. I had
been playing it differently for months live, but recording that specific demo
definitely paved the way to my decision to record at home. My anxiety is
pouring out of me in that song and having it produced by somebody else didn’t
feel right.
Your
Bandcamp page places you in Oakland, while your FB page puts you in Brooklyn.
Are you presently living bicoastally, and if so, can you tell us about how your
life is structured in that sense and how that in turn structures or relates to
your creative process?
I had always wanted to lock myself away during the
dead of winter in New York to write an album so after touring for a month and
playing a show in Brooklyn I decided to stay there instead of going back to
California. I gave away everything I left behind and wrote for months in a
subletted bedroom full of instruments. I began experimenting more and very
quickly had a full band to play with. I’ve played the exact same songs on both
coasts with two bands that sound very different. The New York band was jerky
and abstract, the Oakland band was fuzzy and aggressive. I wrote an album and
moved back to California but playing with my old band didn’t feel right
anymore. I needed to challenge myself more and I feel like that can only be
accomplished by playing solo at present. I wouldn’t have figured anything out
if it weren’t for bouncing around.
What
artists (musicians or otherwise) have most influenced your work?
Broadcast, Elliott Smith, Sharon Van Etten, Brand
New, Death Cab for Cutie (Transatlanticism
specifically), Chopin, Jenny Hval and Atlas Sound. I feel like a sponge
when it comes to music, so I often find myself weaving in and out of different
sounds based on what I need to hear at the time to calm down.
Would
you like to describe your song writing process?
It usually just starts with a feeling or a nagging
thought that I need to get out. I’ll find the tone I need to hear to calm down
and I’ll work off that. The words pour out and the layers almost establish
themselves. I definitely can’t sit down and be like, “I need to write a song
now”, it’s just a stream of consciousness.
Can
you tell us something about your major areas of interest and pursuit other than
music? Are there other artistic media that you work in as well?
I paint, make short films, draw, dance, make
clothes, decorate houses for people. Whatever I can do with my hands to help
deal with whatever it is I’m feeling, I do.
What
are you working on and what’s coming up next for highandfragile?
I’ve been playing a lot of shows in the Bay Area
since I’ve been back. While I had originally planned on recording an album with
a full band, I decided to record everything at home and release something much
more intimate. My album will be out mid-2018 but I plan to release a single end
of December or early January.
I am living in a very happy and safe environment
for the first time thanks to my two closest friends Adam and Lori who are very
excited to help me complete the recording of my new album. Being around them
has been beyond inspirational...Adam is next to me shredding on acoustic
guitar right now.
For the new material, I’ve taken away the bass and
the drums and have replaced them with soundscapes and loops. Every song is
loosely based on a particular anxiety I fret over with the goal of helping both
myself and other people calm down and appreciate existing for just a moment.
The music is ethereal and pulsing and emulates the acts of the human body.
Droning tones become the heartbeat, syrupy solos the excited breathing pattern
and so on. By working alone, I have become more in tune with my feelings and
how they can be represented via sound and I have never been more excited to
share something I have created with the world.
