To weave her art-pop “3D tapestry”, KÁRYYN rewires herself: “I must come undone”Midway through our discussion of KÁRYYN’s forthcoming album PULL, she makes a bold claim. “I am not really making music,” she asserts. “I am collaging sounds together, and I’m thinking about the sound in a 3D way. It is a 3D tapestry.”
Over the course of an hour, it becomes clear exactly what the Syrian-Armenian American means. Start with the record’s full title: PHYSICS. UNIVERSAL. LOVE. LANGUAGE. Entwining KÁRYYN’s longstanding interests in neuroscience, quantum physics and Eastern philosophy, PULL is part of her enduring goal to articulate what it means to be human – all through the language of science and technology.
KÁRYYN on the MusicTech Cover. Image: Fiona Garden for MusicTech
It’s a mission so ambitious and entrancing that it’s taken KÁRYYN over 15 years to complete this record, having started it a decade before her debut album, THE QUANTA SERIES, which was released 2019. But that passage of time has enriched PULL with a wealth of life experience – along with lessons learned from musicians including Pauline Oliveros, James Ford and Hudson Mohawke. The latter two co-produced PULL, an art-pop album that’s both comforting and striking in its raw openness.
“I’m not out to make music,” she affirms once again. “I’m out to express something: to find out what this feeling is about, what it means. That takes time.”
“I absolutely want to bring the most exciting, sick, visual, visceral sounds to the forefront of pop music”
When MusicTech meets KÁRYYN at an east London cafe, her larger-than-life personality echoes the epic, futuristic feel of her music. As she describes how she makes her songs, she sings her lyrics out loud. She refers to herself in third person when discussing her lyrics, and represents her perception of non-linear time by noodling a glass of water between our plates.
“Time is a major collaborator,” she says as she edges the glass along. She recounts the last few years through examples of things her future self would whisper to her during the creative process: “‘No, that can’t work;’ ‘sorry, you’re going to be disappointed about that, but here you are, and you’re emerging’. How do you get over here” – she drags the glass to the window – “and be joyful and also know that everything sucked?”
Born in Alabama, KÁRYYN grew up in Indiana, spending her teenage years in Los Angeles. In the summers, she would also visit Aleppo, where her diasporic Armenian family originally fled to after the Armenian genocide. KÁRYYN would eventually attend Mills College in Oakland, studying under experimental legend Pauline Oliveros. Her concept of “deep listening” would resonate for KÁRYYN in and out of music: “That idea of really listening to the environment and echolocating, you put a signal out, then it comes back. Then what do you have? You respond. That’s how I am in life and in music.”
Image: Fiona Garden for MusicTech
While she made songs using a Korg Kaoss pad in her bedroom, she began playing furious punk-jazz shows in Los Angeles, making beats by smashing light bulbs and experimenting with tapes on stage. But between 2010 and 2015, she moved to New York and “left” music, dedicating herself to being “among people who are much better than me so that I could learn”.
“I was like, ‘[music] makes me really happy’ – and then I was like, ‘this sucks,’” she adds. “I just want to be creative.” But enticed by the allure of songwriting, KÁRYYN would return to making music, writing the bulk of PULL during a stint in Berlin. She’d meet people, co-write an opera praised by Björk, and collect the lessons she’d write about on the record. “I travelled and I lived my life,” she says. “I lived it with great… focus. By the end of 2016, I’d written everything other than End To Knowing You.”
Most tracks start with KÁRYYN and her Kaoss Pad, which she calls an “extension of my voice” – which she understands as its own technology. “What I use it most for is my weaving,” she says, returning to her 3D tapestry. “It’s very tactile, having that pad – it’s a part of me.” She received the KP3 model in 2006 and began “sourcing” (her word for “jamming”) to create songs.
Image: Fiona Garden for MusicTech
Take the beginning of Collapse Phase. “The genesis of that is me and my Kaoss pad, doing some loops, but then using the Pad Motion granular synth, which took my voice and then made it into a beat. I did the Pad Motion and then it did this” – she mimics a breathtaking swell, then the expulsion of skittering notes – “I was like, ‘oh my god’! I instantly started to do a rhythm on the bass sound, singing, ‘I’m ready for this collapse phase’. So that’s how it all works for me in the beginning.”
Using the Kaoss pad to granulise and chop up vocal samples allows KÁRYYN to deconstruct herself – reflecting her interest in neuroplasticity, or literally rewiring yourself. “It’s incredible to hear myself fragmented that way and then come back together, which is really my process: ‘I must come undone. Then, how do I rearrange myself?’” she explains. “The album is very much about that.”
Despite the heady philosophies behind the album, PULL is thoroughly accessible – each cut has some sticky melody, some infectious groove that ensures you’re in tune with her headspace. PULL was always intended to be a pop record, she says, citing the thrilling sound design of hyperpop and Katy Perry’s chart hit ‘E.T’ as inspirations (“that song is so juicy and catchy”).
“I absolutely want to bring the most exciting, sick, visual, visceral sounds to the forefront of pop music,” KÁRYYN affirms. “To me, [the album’s] not experimental – these are just incredible sounds we’re making.”
“This is really my process: ‘I must come undone. Then, how do I rearrange myself?’”
To achieve the specific sounds KÁRYYN was chasing, she first had to find collaborators who understood her intuitive approach to music. She’s studied the basics of synthesis, of course, but admits she’s no expert. “I’m comfortable with not knowing,” she adds. “But also just saying ‘I’m curious’, as a woman, that is powerful to feel.”
KÁRYYN found that understanding in producer James Ford, who commenced work with her in 2019. “I loved working with KÁRYYN,” he tells MusicTech over email. “She has a clear artistic vision and pushed me to find new and innovative processes to create a palette of sounds that fit her world. We used some synths but mainly lots of KÁRYYN’s voice, processed to make textures, drums and melodic elements.”
Ford might not seem like the most likely collaborator: He’s better known for his work with indie staples like Arctic Monkeys or Fontaines D.C., and on paper, their differing approaches to music shouldn’t mesh. Ford’s attitude is “sounds good, feels good”, while KÁRYYN starts with a specific visual she wants to achieve. But his openness was key to realising her vivid visions on the album.
Image: Fiona Garden for MusicTech
One brief that KÁRYYN gave him was: “I want a sound like cicadas as the sun is fragmenting through the leaves.” In response, Ford turned to the Deckard’s Dream (Yamaha CS-80 clone) to create crystalline sounds, like the delicate stabs on Keeper. “It was so empowering to work with somebody who is so deeply present,” KÁRYYN adds.
It helped that Ford had access to a swathe of coveted synths that created a sonic tactility essential to PULL and its immersive nature. The Oberheim Matrix produced the warm, glassy sounds found throughout the album, especially on End To Knowing You, while the Roland SH-101 created the scattered bassline on Forward. Ford also cites the ARP 2600 and the Juno 106 as some of the gear they worked with.
They used Mutable Instruments’ Rings and Clouds on Collapse Phase, which has a whipping, gravitational feel and takes inspiration from the phase of a dying star transitioning into a black hole. KÁRYYN was improvising with the synth modules, searching for a sound that would depict the overwhelming pull of a collapse phase.
Image: Fiona Garden for MusicTech
“We were recording, and it was taking forever,” she recalls. “I was just like, ‘wait a little more!’ [Ford]’s the most patient person… and then suddenly we just got a WHOOMP, WHOO WHOO WHOO WHOO WHOO! I was like, there it is: that is the black hole.”
Though the pair eventually completed work on the album, KÁRYYN felt she needed a second perspective on the record – so she turned to Hudson Mohawke. Following the release of the Scottish producer’s album Cry Sugar in 2021, they got together in the spring to work on the record. “He was so dedicated,” KÁRYYN recalls. “He put so much of himself into helping me finish the album.”
The duo share a love of “wild, awesome sounds”, and Mohawke’s precise ear helped KÁRYYN drill down into the details. For instance, he helped refine the mighty, clanging snare on Mind Over Heart – a track where KÁRYYN expresses exhaustion over a flighty lover. Taking inspiration from the viscerality of Alan Lomax’s chain gang field recordings, they bashed rocks with metal, recording the results and infusing them in the snare. “It’s very hard to hold space for someone that keeps letting you down,” KÁRYYN says of the song. “That snare, I wanted it to feel like hard work.”
Earlier in our conversation, KÁRYYN reflects on the challenges female producers can face commanding respect in music. The creative relationship she had with Mohawke was “important” to her, she says. “He’s respecting me back, he’s telling me what he thinks and what he sees. I’m learning about myself, and I’m really lucky. I earned it all – I feel proud of that.”
“I am not really making music. I am collaging sounds together… It is a 3D tapestry”
In the years of making PULL, KÁRYYN said that she felt she had “something to prove to myself”. “I wanted to become a great producer of my work,” she explains. “I don’t necessarily have the aspiration to be a producer… I want to just be more me, and less of whatever became of me – when I was trying to prove myself as a kid, as a teenager, or in my 20s. Or really empty aspirations to ‘make it’, whatever the hell that meant.”
KÁRYYN says she’s proud of herself for trusting the long route to the album; to be willing to wait, to cultivate the life experiences necessary, and to learn from others. “It wasn’t easy in the beginning,” she says. “I didn’t have the wisdom to think of things in this way – that spiritual technology for thinking and feeling is a major part.”
Image: Fiona Garden for MusicTech
“This album made me as much as I made this album,” she adds. “This is a journey and it has its right time to emerge, because the subject matter she’s singing about and the things that she’s saying, I need it now more than ever.”
She hesitates to say whether these 17 years have paid off; after all, the album’s not out yet. But she is clear about how she hopes listeners receive it.
“I don’t care about ‘liking’,” she asserts. “What did it make you feel?”
KÁRYYN’s album PHYSICS. UNIVERSAL. LOVE. LANGUAGE (PULL) is out on Mute Records on May 29.
Words: Alex Rigotti
Photography: Fiona Garden
Hair: Claire Moore
Makeup: Dasha Taivas
Location: Silverspace Studios
The post To weave her art-pop “3D tapestry”, KÁRYYN rewires herself: “I must come undone” appeared first on MusicTech.