Q: The new album, Unholy Majesty, seems to be surrounded by much darker imagery than A Hand Full Of Hurricanes. Did you deliberately set out to make a heavier record this time?
Rose Kemp: Yes is the short answer. I’ll elaborate! I had been working on my guitar sound a lot over the past year or so and when I was happy with it, it was time to make an album and not before! I have heard Burning Witch and Iron Monkey now! After that there was little chance of me being able to stay where I was musically. It deeply affected me. I had discovered horrible and harrowing music, made for the purpose of healing, pleasure and satisfaction, and it was what I had been searching for, for so long.
I love the photo of you on Myspace with the Kiss-style makeup! Is it liberating to be able to amplify the darker aspects of your personality?
Kiss-style. Ha ha. Any music I have ever done has been mostly or completely on my terms and so I am very free and fulfilled with all that I create. I stopped drinking and started eating properly, and I don’t smoke anymore, and last year I rediscovered my first love and discipline, Cecchetti ballet. So I can feel my childhood creativity is slowly growing back along with my brain cells. In the past I only ever wore make-up with a large dose of irony on the side, but now I see it as something to do now that I have few vices and I use it to make things a bit more clear for my audience, and likewise for people who aren’t familiar with what I do. It is the only time I have ever looked like I sound.
Tell us about the album artwork. The image of the crow and the blood is striking to say the least. Who drew it?
Erm *cough* it’s erm…that’s a magpie! It’s awesome isn’t it? I love it. The boldness and the intricacies of the record were captured really well I thought. Glyn at Scrawled Designs did all of the artwork, he is known as a rock poster artwork guy mainly but he is a very clever illustrator with good design sense too. The imagery on the inside cover is of a crow and a dove separating because it was thought that, in ye olden days, that was what a magpie was made from.
This is slightly old news, but I couldn’t find any info online so here goes. What provoked your drastic change in direction after Glance?
I didn’t really cite a change of direction after Glance. If Glance had been produced the way I was suggesting at the time it would have sounded more coherent in the time line and Glance would have been the departure from the a cappella album before, you see? Still, rarely does anything go quite the way you plan and even rarer is the timing right in musical matters! It has been about 8 years since I recorded Glance so there is bound to be many changes, or one would hope so anyway. If I were still making the same records, I would expect you to call me up on it!
A lot of your songs seem to progress through several complex passages, almost like movements. Do you think this shows something of your prog influences?
Well, I listen to a heck of a lot of prog so I would suppose so. I was hoping it would rub off on me one day! Actually, truth be told, I’ve always just liked messing about with the concept of ‘the song’. Most people alarmingly just stick to what people were doing in the ’60s, which gets on my wick frankly. I am massively inspired by bands who do various types of 15-minute instrumental epics, but am personally still happy to keep finding my own way and letting their sounds rather than their structures seep in to what I do.
There aren’t many women out there fusing folk and metal influences into the kind of catchy, arty rock you’re making. Who do you consider to be your peers?
I wish I knew, then I could do what everyone else in the world does and get a support slot on tour with them, get them to champion me and sign to their label and appeal to exactly the same fans and sell records and be able to make a few more albums! My advice is, don’t do what I’ve done. Just copy someone else bar-for-bar and then ask them if you can support on their world tour, get a deal with their label, and Bob will indeed be your uncle. Do not create, it’s bad for business!
Are there any other women emerging from the Bristol underground scene we should be aware of?
Rozi Plain has just made a cute album for Fence Records.
Who would win in a loop pedal war between you and KT Tunstall?
Ha ha. Funniest question yet. The only dignified answer to that is that I hope we would both be fighting using a more worthwhile piece of equipment! I only ever used mine for multi-layering vocals because arranging vocal harmonies is one of my lifelong passions and I didn’t have any other singers to take around with me on tour (it’s tricky to find flight cases for them). I WOULD NEVER use it to beat percussion in to ‘recreate’ a ‘band’ sound, the whole overuse of the ‘one-man band’ element has not aged well! I have found a way to get round the no singers thing now though, more news on that next year. I would like to think I would be the winner of a vocal duel, however!
For Unholy Majesty you worked with Biffy Clyro producer Chris Sheldon. What did he bring to the project?
He brought organisation, good use of time and telling me when we had the take and against my instincts that I should stop singing now! Frankly he is just completely fabulous darling! That’s what he would want me to say! He just makes everything sound amazing. I wanted to work with him because he just gets that sound without losing the sound that me and the band spend every waking hour perfecting. Man is a legend. End of.
Can you tell us a bit about the first single, ‘Nanny’s World’? What’s the inspiration behind that?
‘Nanny’s World’ partly refers to the so called ‘nanny state’ that the current government have handed to us, what people often gloss over is that we took it, we lapped it up. We love health and safely, when it suits us, but when it doesn’t, well, that’s a different story! Also it encompasses things such as the phrases which are a device to make people uncomfortable. I had no idea anyone would want to use it as a single! It is also partly about my own family break-up following my parents’ divorce and the fact that my heart will always belong to the English countryside. It is about many, many different things.
Having listened to the whole album, I have to say that ‘Flawless’ really stood out. To have such a powerful piano ballad in the midst of all the anger and energy really worked for me. Is this song very specific to you or do you think women in general come under too much pressure to conform to a certain appearance and lifestyle?
It is really about the music business, or rather the direction it took when TV finally realised a few years ago that ‘the kids like music’ and simultaneously the major labels started going down the pan, and so the sheer amounts of pointless, but clean, tripe we are fed on TV and radio now is frankly sick. The song is just a very heartfelt, very simple song that is arranged to be accessible so everyone will know that I don’t want to be clean and easy and Disney and indie-straight-tie-clean-shirt-car-advert or glockenspiel-acoustic-pointless-nonsense. It’s just a final statement to everyone in the business who has ever pushed me to conform to some safe ideal of a saleable woman figure and said it’s for my own good, or “everyone will like you better this way”, or “you can’t fight the way the business is” etc etc etc. ‘Flawless’ just very simply and very quietly says, “OK, that’s fine but I don’t want to work with you and I don’t want any part of what you call music”.
‘Vacancies’ is also an incredibly powerful, punishing song. Your vocal is so strong, it sounds as if you’re actually dredging the sound up right from your bile duct. How did you learn to manipulate your voice like that?
I am so glad you asked that. I am really pleased with the level of epic we managed to get into ‘Vacancies’ in all of the arrangement. Also, I have been working my bile duct off these past couple of years expanding my breath capacity and my range by warming up properly every day and exploring the resonance my body can actually create. I also cite giving up smoking and drinking and writing beyond my capabilities all the time. It’s the same mentality as buying a dress that’s obviously too small and saying “I’ll lose a bit more weight and get into it by summer”. The only difference is, I have to be able to sing/play whatever piece it is by the time I next go on stage! I constantly push myself. As you know, I have never been one for slouching around in an ill-fitting plaid shirt pretending I don’t have to try and it all comes naturally, because this kind of thing very clearly doesn’t. It comes through practice and guile. I’m so glad you noticed!
Do you have any particular favourites from the album yourself?
‘Wholeness Sounds’ and ‘Vacancies’ and ‘The Unholy’ and ‘Dirty Glow’, and the intro to ‘Flawless’. It’s fair to say I am ecstatic with the whole thing you know? I am very pleased with how it all came out. Sheldon hadn’t heard a lot of the tracks when we started the first day with him tracking at the studio so all of myself and the band’s pre-production paid off!
You seem to be completely in your element when performing live. How does it make you feel to be able to convey the passion in these songs with such energy?
It makes me feel like a living, breathing, transient being with a purpose! It is my gift and I am glad there are those who delight in receiving it.
What are you planning for your September tour? Any surprises in store?
Well if I told you about it now, it’d be a rubbish surprise wouldn’t it!
From: https://wearsthetrousers.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/rose-kemp-i-will-not-conform-to-some-safe-ideal-of-a-saleable-woman-figure/
