picture by Sofia Martins
What a pleasure it was to interview Sofia Martins from "your everyday high pitch iconoclast" - Starsha Lee. I saw them for the first time at Camden Rocks Festival a few years ago and I never forgot the performance they gave. Fronted by Sofia the band also consists of Crispin Gray on guitar which gives you a perfect mixture of sonic danger and arty performance and you will realize pretty quickly that there are no other bands like them.
Sofia is not afraid to experiment and she delivers some of the highest vocals you'll hear as well as some unique moves that draw you into their trance.
They have just released their first album in March this year so make sure you check them out, they have created their own style and sound merging Sofia's art into their music and live shows.
A must see !
1 - You have just released your first album in March 2018. Could you
tell me a bit more about what inspired the songs on Post-God Metaphysics ?
Lyric and image wise it's not an introduction at all because all those lyrics are fragments of poems of mine written in Portuguese. I tore them apart in order to come out with blunt conlusions. The artwork is also part of my photography work - a self portrait.
Post-god Metaphysics is a union of various pieces that talk about the substitution of sacredness into a subjective notion of sacredness, or a recovery. I'm not talking about religion, a god can be anything as long as it's your private shrine and it displays a cosmogony for you. This is why Post-god Metaphysics is written without a capital G. It's an album that talks about the voids and the graces of substituting minor-gods or beliefs. Meanwhile we're now at a recording studio for the first time recording an EP.
2 - There is something very mysterious about Starsha Lee in the way you
promote yourself online . You don’t use personal posts like most bands do to
document their musician life and that really makes you unique. Is it a conscious
decision or are you just not into the whole social media mania ?
The internet is something that I struggle with very much. Mixing art and the mundane is not a good idea in my opinion, it's like presenting a thesis and it's antithesis at the same time - ending up in a dangerous contradiction. Being an artist on the internet is a contradictio in adjecto. In other words metaphysics and breakfast pancakes do not seem to match very well to me... But even worse is that the internet is quite clearly damaging our capacity for respecting and socializing with others. It presents itself as a place for meeting "new friends" and at first seems very innocent - by putting everybody in the world in contact with everybody else in the world - but the majority of this worldwide contact is creating hatred all over the place. Just check any, and I mean any, YouTube content and you see endless amounts of rude comments and even death threats displayed! People commit suicide over cyber-bullying - and this is not a myth but a reality! This society is normalizing offensive behavior and I certainly do not want to be part of it.
Also I'm never vocal if I dislike something on the internet because it so easily turns into a lack of basic manners and education, and that lack of boundaries only increases hate. I even see musicians writing posts on facebook etc to say how terrible they think other musicians are - for everyone on the planet to read. I really think this is disgraceful, low manners at best, and I will certainly not give my "like" to this kind of attitude.
Nevertheless, I can also see good things..... I do.
I'm
very happy to see how animal rights have developed because of the internet.
There's petitions everywhere, organised vegan meetings, marches etc, so there's good things that I can't deny. But there's an awful side of it that seems to be bigger. And whilst I understand those who say the internet depends on how you use it, I still don't think you can control how you use it anymore... it's a poisoned apple.
3 - If you were to cover a song which one would you choose and why ?
4 - I love the energy that Sofia has on stage. You almost seem to be
somewhere else , could you tell us more about your experience while you’re on
stage and what state of mind you go through while performing ?
Stage for me is the place for metamorphosis, it's there where everything happens. It's a moment of unfolding yourself and, in that
way, is quite private. It doesn't seem to be private of course, but it is, even
knowing you're 'privately' together with people.
This
is not easy to explain because we're talking about revealing an identity on
stage. Identity is a very complex
concept because it's definition escapes from our very hands of understanding. I don't think it's as straight forward as
psychology or any other science tries to explain.
All sciences are made of updated facts and therefore the validity of
those facts never lasts for long - they're paradigms. As for the self, we have to go deeper and
deeper into sensations and explore everything that seems to have our signature
on it. The self can be many selves - and
I know a few actors that told me this is a reality and I believe them. Butoh dance in Japan, for example, is a
completely anti-straight-forward identity concept that displays the individual as multiple identities on stage. You can grasp those multiple entities where
you think your identity exists, it's free choice. I grasp mine in memory, childhood memory, or
a corpse memory. Like the ancient
theatre, or any tribe ritual, that used masks as accessories to go beyond
reality or beyond the body (which means to grasp a character or a meaning),
sometimes on stage I feel the need to bring items to help me to reach this
"beyond". Therefore the stage items are symbolic objects that help you in this
process. I normally use a few items on
stage to get me to that other level of things.
I sew little family items on my stage clothes like bits of corpses to
ask the memory to place me there, to help me remember why I'm there. Because it's easy to forget and be
distracted.
Words
are also great tools for this ritual but, because of the presence of the audience, that can be collapsed
and sometimes destroyed. Unfortunately any work of art, or attempt of work of
art, has always a reception and that reception is always a judgement that I
don't want to be aware of. Judgement are collateral happenings that have nothing to do with what I'm trying to do on
stage. Either a receptive reception or a
repulsive reception, both are something I have to be disconnected from, the
audience has to disappear in order for me to pass a
message. It's an alone/together
principle, which in a way is no different from what we experience from
socialization. We're always inside of
ourselves and what others are is an illusion - we never really know what they
are. It's very peculiar isn't it? I
remember years ago saying to a musician friend of mine that I would like to
perform at home without anybody watching and he was very surprised. I think Duchamp would like that, it's an anti-art principle!
I attempt to erase any contact with anything that distracts me so I wear
sunglasses on stage to block out the distractions. I don't wear them because I think they look
great on me - it's just that's it's the only thing I could come up with to
achieve the desired effect.
All of this is a spiritual training.
Picture by Sofia Martins
5 - How do you write your lyrics ?
My lyrics are a result of years of studying philosophy and writing poetry. I normally tear my poems into various
parts and purposely work to sum up a conclusion from each one - and then the
lyrics start to show up slowly. I probably have a different way of writing from
an English speaking person because I'm Portuguese, so the process is
transferring words of the maternal language into a different one. It's not easy
because I love words and sometimes it's hard to replace them with different
phonetics. I think lyrics have to be effective somehow. My lyrical style (if I have one) is pretty
much influenced by Nietzsche's aphorisms and Haiku poetry. That doesn't mean
I'm always successful, but that's what I try to do.
6 - Have you ever met any of your heroes and which ones would you like
to meet that you haven’t met ?
Yes, my father. He was a great jazz drummer and a brilliant photographer. He's also an animal
rights defender and has an extraordinary sense of fashion. He's one of the few that spreads musicality
even in his walking - an example to follow!
7 - If you weren’t a musician what would you be ?
I'm not a musician. I collaborate with musicians, that's all.
8 - Do you have any plans to tour Europe or anywhere else outside the
U.K. ?
Not at the moment, no.
9 - Is there any bands that aren’t known in the mainstream that you have
come across ?
Not off the top of my head right now.
10 - Where would you like to be at this time next year ?
Finally having the time to think of what I would like to do for my
PHD and, also finally, finishing my new analog photography series - which I hope
to exhibit.
Picture by Sofia Martins
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Check out the latest interview with Luke Griffiths and if you're in a band and want to be considered for an interview please email me : wendymcguiree@gmail.com
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