Cross worlds
I could enjoy her music live in the past Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona. It was an outdoor concert on a sunny afternoon by the sea. Although the powerful sound of the concerts in the closer stages was not the best way to enjoy her enormous talent, Julia Kent gave us the beauty of her music, the strength of her soul. Her recent Green and Grey (2011) had been published just a couple of months ago. The wonder of her art conveys her vision of the border between natural and artificial worlds as a sound map in a continuous movement. It’s a beauty full of life as well as every question posed to us in each of the pieces included. Julia Kent responds crossing borders.
Your brand new album is called “Green and grey” and it’s introduced as “inspired by the intersections between the natural world and the human-created world”. Which one is yours?
Like all beings, I'm part of both worlds. But I'm definitely more of an urban creature. "Green and Grey" was inspired by the way nature retains its power, even as we humans are overrunning the natural world. In the heart of a huge city, we're still at the mercy of weather, the elements, and the other forces of nature. I always have this image of plants pushing up through concrete. Many of the field recordings I incorporated into "Green and Grey" juxtapose natural and human-created sounds; then I tried to imitate the natural sounds with electronics, in order to blur the boundaries as much as possible.
“Delay” was your solo debut album released in 2007 and it’s about the time you spend in airports, so you were inspired by an impersonal place to create a deeply personal music. How it was?
Airports are such interesting spaces: simultaneously completely generic but also evocative of the places to which they are gateways, and conduits for so many people and the emotions they bring with them. Time spent in airports is a kind of limbo, and when I'm in that sort of state of transition I feel emotionally vulnerable and also reflective, which is what inspired the music for "Delay."
By that time, you were touring with Antony and the Johnsons. You’ve also collaborated with many artists like Donovan and Devendra Banhart and your solo projects. What does creativity mean to you?
I've been so lucky to play with so many incredible artists, and I have learned so much from all of them. Everyone has their own musical world and their own way of communicating it, and for me that communication can be a really creative process. In making my own music, I made a very deliberate choice to keep it entirely solo, which made for a different, and equally interesting, type of creative process.
Why did you choose cello as your instrument?
I've played cello from a very young age, so the origins of my choice are lost in the mists of time! But I am happy to have the cello as my instrument, since it has such a range and such a distinctive voice, and can be so expressive.
What about your early days in Rasputina?
Melora, the founder of Rasputina, was (and continues to be) a visionary: someone with an absolutely personal approach to making music that also encompasses a visual and literary aesthetic. When I played in Rasputina, it was a totally different time in New York City: I remember getting mugged on the way to rehearsal, and ferrying our cellos around in the back of Melora's pickup truck through the streets of ungentrified Dumbo. It also felt like a more creative and interesting time in New York, but perhaps I'm just being nostalgic...
“Last day in july” was inspired by a limit, a deadline, the end of a summer. Are you more inspired by death or by birth?
At this point in my life, alas, more by death. But it's the prospect of death that gives sweetness to life, of course. We wouldn't treasure summer as much if it were endless.
Returning to the new album, “Green and grey” contains a lot of references to classical Greek culture. What do you find in classical culture?
I am very interested in how mythology is still so psychologically relevant to our lives. We are our myths, and vice versa. Mythology to me implies a striving toward an ideal while still recognizing the inevitability and the interestingness of human imperfections.
One of the tracks is called “Missed”. Have you feel missed in life?
I feel as though that title can be interpreted in many different ways: passive, active...and also homophonous. Of course there are things that you miss in life, and things that miss you, as well!
The ending track is “Wake low”, a deeply moving piece. Does life make hard to change that “low” for an “up”?
That title refers to a type of weather formation--I think one that is often associated with a storm. When I made the music, I was thinking about the way we can sometimes have weather systems in our lives: depressions, storms, forces beyond our control.
If I told you about a naked ship, what would you think?
I would think about something slipping gracefully through the sea.
How do you live the passage of time?
I accept the passage of time as a process. I am not particularly organized or goal-oriented in my approach to life: I feel as though life brings what it brings. But that is its beauty.
Could you share a dream with us?
I'm afraid many of my dreams are anxiety dreams involving missed flights and luggage! But sometimes I dream about people I love who are dead, and then, for a moment, at least in the dream, I feel their presence instead of their absence.
Photos by Veronica Mariani. Index photo by Jason Cambpell