Briana Marela is a Peruvian American composer/artist raised in Seattle, WA. Her music varies from experimental, electronic, and ambient to lyrically forward pop music. Her latest record, My Inner Rest, is out now.
Cole Pulice is a composer, improviser, and saxophonist from Minneapolis, and currently based in Oakland; Briana Marela is a musician, composer, and artist from Seattle, and also currently based in Oakland. Both recently released new records — Cole’s Land’s End Eternal came out last month, and Briana’s My Inner Rest is out today — so to celebrate, the two got on the phone to catch up about it.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Cole Pulice: I feel like the first time I met you was when you and Joel [Skavdahl, Briana’s partner and bandmate] were touring your music through Minneapolis, and played that amazing house show.
Briana Marela: That was such a cute show.
Cole: Gosh, was that 2019?
Briana: That was 2019, yeah.
Cole: Holy smokes. Yeah, it was the first time I met you, and also the first time I heard you play. And I remember from that show very specifically the water bowl element — it was kind of a gestural instrument that you had built for the set, right?
Briana: Yeah. Actually, on that tour back in 2019, it was the very first piece that I wrote for this new album that’s coming out. It’s called “My Inner Rest,” so it’s the title track. It features me using a hand mirror to control vocal processing, and then this bowl of water where, as I’m dripping water droplets into it, it’s stepping through a sequencer.
Cole: I’ve seen you perform several times live, and it’s really a special surreal experience because of all the custom gestural instruments that you use. I was curious if you wanted to talk a bit about some of those instruments that are so important to the live shows that you’ve translated to this recording.
Briana: Yeah. I just have become so interested in working with objects or props, I think due to thinking about electronic music in relation to magical realism and wanting it to feel like I’m interacting in a, quote-unquote, “real” setting. So it’s the idea of, “I’m in a garden, I’m working with plants, I’m talking to plants” — that’s actually for a piece from You Are a Wave, but it’s still a part of this world, so I’m going to be playing that on this tour too. There are these copper flowers that I’m touching with another copper rod, so I’m making a connection to complete a circuit, and then that’ll act like a toggle to trigger different changes that I’ve programmed in Max. The flowers were actually something that were designed with my partner Joel.
Cole: Amazing.
Briana: Yeah, he’s an amazing artist. It’s cool to have that to interact with. The physicality of it — I can lift it up and turn it, and things change too because I have an accelerometer on my wrist. I’ve built these mesh sleeves that have an accelerometer in each wrist that allows me to do gestural control. Like when I’m holding the hand mirror for the “My Inner Rest” piece, the mirror actually isn’t doing something itself; it’s the accelerometer on my wrist that is creating the parameters changing. But it’s different if I’m just moving and flopping my hands around — which sometimes I am doing a little bit of ethereal conducting, to a degree. But for that piece in particular, it was more about, “I want to interact with this object. What does this object mean?” A mirror is such a loaded object, and that piece in particular was about self-doubt and tearing myself apart and realizing I didn’t love myself and I didn’t have compassion or appreciation for who I really was. So it was wanting to confront myself in that way, and [with the mirror] being able to confront myself on stage. And then I also will turn it to the audience at a point. Because it is about perceiving myself, but then it’s also about being perceived by others, too, and how that influences the way you perceive yourself.
Cole: That’s incredible. And it’s funny, maybe technically the mirror isn’t doing anything, but for all intents and purposes, as someone who’s seen you perform several times, it feels like it is. That’s a really powerful moment in your set, when you’re using these objects that bring this moment of, Oh, my gosh, wait a second — every time Briana’s moving the hand mirror or picking up those flowers, the sounds I’m hearing are morphing in this surreal way. I think “magical realism” is a really apt way to describe it. I remember with the water bowl one specifically, because it takes a moment to realize that there’s a connection happening. There’s this moment of reality feeling like it’s bending. It’s a really special aspect of your live performance, so I’m glad you’re going to be touring the music.
Briana: Thank you so much. Yeah, I feel like I had to figure out this way of performing because I just suck at playing regular instruments live. It was like a challenge to me as a vocalist of, What can I do to perform music live in my own way, that’s not being very technically proficient? I’m not like you, who’s a total shredder. [Laughs.]
Cole: Oh, you’re too nice.
Briana: I have so many friends who are so good at playing their instruments, and I was like, My instrument is my voice, but what else can I do? And that just pushed me, I think, when I was at Mills [College] to really be like, What can I do on stage that would be interesting to myself, and maybe to others too?
Cole: Well, it’s magic. So, yeah, you’re tapped into something really special.
Briana: Thank you so much. We were just talking earlier that I’m sad that we’re missing each other’s release shows in the Bay. But I’m also really excited about your new album and you getting to share that with everybody.
Cole: And likewise.
Briana: I’m an audio nerd, so I was curious if you recorded this one differently than Scry? Because there was something about the new one that feels more spacious, or a little more roomy.
Cole: Yeah I would say there’s maybe one or two big changes in technically how things were recorded. I recorded most of it in my apartment, just DI into my audio interface. And then George Cory Todd, this engineer in town, helped me do additional engineering for specifically a piano piece. He helped me record at Tiny Telephone. And then the “After the Rain” piece, there was a bunch of guitar players that helped play from Oakland, and from the Free Key Choir. But I would say the biggest technical change — and it’s funny that it feels roomier, I totally agree that it feels spacious — but it’s in part because the mic that I used to record this is actually inside of the saxophone, as opposed to being clipped onto the bell.
Briana: Oh, interesting.
Cole: Yeah. And actually in that technical change, it allowed me to have a lot more flexibility in getting an even response across the saxophone and the mixing and post-processing that I did on the sound. Basically, in short, this new microphone that I’ve been using is called an intraMic, and it’s super, super sweet. It goes in between the mouthpiece and the neck of the saxophone. It’s just a couple of inches from where your mouth is touching the mouthpiece and the reed, so it’s getting a super direct signal of your breath and of the resonance of the reed. So it almost feels more like it’s a DI signal, like a guitar. When you have a mic clipped onto the bell of the saxophone, it tends to get a really uneven response. The low notes are really billowy and overload the microphone, and the really high ones get a much weaker signal because the sound is coming out of the body of the saxophone.
Briana: Wow, that’s so interesting. And do you use that live?
Cole: Yes. Because — and I’m curious about how this sort of thing affects your live performance — before I was using this intraMic system, when it’s clipped onto the bell, it picks up all the extraneous noise of everything else that’s going around. And if you’re playing with other musicians, or if you’re playing outside and there’s a lot of wind, it would create all this feedback or the pedals would just start freaking out. But with the intraMic, you can be standing next to someone smashing on a cymbal and it won’t pick up any of the other sound. So with using pedals and stuff, it has been a total revelation for me.
Briana: That’s incredible.
Cole: When you’re performing live with your gestural instruments, how do you workshop and problem solve feedback or chain issues?
Briana: You know, it depends. For my microphone, I’m using a wireless microphone, which has been a revelation the last five years, just to be free to move around and be gestural. But the downside is that it’s a tiny cardioid condenser mic and it’s very sensitive, so there are times where if the speaker is facing the wrong way, I’ll get really bad feedback. Also, if I want to turn my signal up instead, what I’ve been doing in Max is using compressors to get my voice louder without actually having to turn it up as much to get it in. It just helps with balancing out some of the processing.
Cole: I know with You Are a Wave, you put it out within six months or so of me moving to the Bay, in 2022. I know that was in part influenced by your time at Mills, so I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about how being at Mills influenced your compositional and improvisational and technical process, your relationship to your art and your modality of creating stuff?
Briana: Both of these albums, essentially all the material was done around the same time, but I put out You Are a Wave first because it had some pieces about my dad passing away, and also it was mostly fixed media pieces I had done at Mills. And then My Inner Rest is all live pieces. So I did a two-step thing just to keep them separate from each other — even though there are some live elements in You Are a Wave. But My Inner Rest was more the performative, meant to be live [pieces]. And You Are a Wave has a bunch of stuff that — like, I don’t have a Buchla 100 or anything like that, so I can’t perform those live.
Cole: Yeah, I feel like My Inner Rest, even though they’re live pieces, they stand alone as recordings so well in part because it’s mixed so thoughtfully. It’s such a different experience listening to My Inner Rest on headphones — the use of stereo panning and the sort of ping-ponging in some of the processing, and the depth of how your voice will be really up front and then some of the processing will suddenly feel like it’s echoing really far in the background. It feels so four dimensional. Giving these pieces this new life as recordings, were you thinking at all about trying to give the album its own fingerprint from the live performance, as sort of a different art object?
Briana: Yeah, definitely. It was really hard for me because I wanted them to feel so alive; the liveness was so important, so crucial. And I feel like you have talked about wanting that feeling of liveness to retain in your recordings as well. But it was hard because I didn’t want it to be a live album truly. Our friend was like, “Yeah, the songs feel a little shorter or more tight than when you do them live.” And I was like, “Well, I deleted a lot of the silences.” [Laughs.] You know, just trimming things up a little bit the way you would for a recording, because people don’t need to listen to this extra five seconds of silence. So I tightened them up a little bit, and then asked Brendan Glasson — who recorded the pieces at Mills at the concert hall — to then play some synth overdubs. And it made it feel more like, OK, now it’s a recording. Adding one overdub gave it some grounding and made it feel not as quite as floaty as it can be live. And I like my songs being really floaty — I don’t have a lot of bass or chordal stuff in the live show — but I think in the recording, it just helps things feel a little more grounded.
Cole: Yes. It’s funny to hear you describe the music as floaty. I feel like that’s also a word I have been using to describe the music that I make, and it’s one of those things where it feels like the right word, but I’m not sure what exactly I’m trying to get at by saying that. But, yeah, I would describe your music as very floaty, and that’s part of what’s very magical about it.
Briana: [Laughs.] I love the floatiness of your music too. It’s so beautiful. There are so many amazing parts on your record, too, where the guitar and the saxophone will sync up and be in unison, for example, and then they’ll kind of part ways. It’s so amazing and magical. I was wondering — speaking about overdubs, obviously you can’t play guitar and saxophone at the same time. So was one instrument leading over the other?
Cole: That’s a great question. Honestly, it was kind of a back and forth process where I really wanted to capture when the saxophone and the guitar were playing out of time, but in complete unison together, almost in this surreal way where there’s not a lot of rhythmic grounding or time being counted, but they’re moving simultaneously very, very tightly together. That was a really important part of the compositional process on the record. On the last track, Maria BC — who’s a phenomenal songwriter and musician here in the Bay — they sang the melody with the saxophone on the last track [“After the Rain”]. And similarly, I wanted the saxophone and voice to be completely locked in together, but not have there be a driving time to the piece.
Briana: It’s not on a click or anything.
Cole: Exactly. Which was kind of a complicated thing — and this was part of the reason why it was helpful to do the record in my apartment on my own time. I would say there wasn’t really a thing leading. Which is, again, how I wanted it, to be this non-hierarchical, both on the same plane. But the way that I found best to do it was I recorded the guitar and then I recorded saxophone on it. And then I would redo some of the guitar to the saxophone line. And then something on the saxophone line would change and I would redo part of the guitar to the saxophone. It was just this constant back and forth of having to overdub. I was writing some of the composition as I was recording it, and as things changed, I had to account for them in the various guitar and saxophone or voice tracks. I love the way it turned out, but it was a lot of tinkering minute details of phrasing and articulation, making sure some of, for instance, the glissando gestures were tethered to the right spots. Because it’s a delicate balance to have that out of time feel, but wanting things to feel really locked in together.
Briana: Totally.
Cole: I have never done a ton of overdubs, but I would say overdubbing was more a part of the compositional process in this than some of the music that I’ve recorded before.
Briana: I really hear what you’re talking about. It feels like a collaborative approach between the two instruments. There’s this interplay between them. And I think that’s what is so interesting and intriguing in hearing the way you integrated guitar into this record. It doesn’t feel like, “I’m just making a guitar record.” There’s a conversation happening.
Cole: Thanks for listening so closely. That’s a really good way of putting it. Guitar is a very new instrument for me. There’s a longer three-part composition that takes up the bulk of the record, and that was a melodic piece that I’d been playing on saxophone for a long time, but not really ever recorded in full. And playing guitar to it felt like it brought a new magic or a certain poetry to the gesture of the piece. And, yeah, like you say, I didn’t want it to just be like I’m playing guitar changes to saxophone stuff. I really wanted it to feel like a compositional color on the palette of the record.
Briana: I love that, and it makes me think about how you’re going to approach it live. It’s interesting that your things aren’t recorded to click. My whole album is definitely not recorded to click. Our friend Brendan’s going to play at my release show in Oakland, and it’s funny to play music with someone but it’s so out of time… I sometimes have a hard time making decisions, and when you’re playing solo, you can kind of bend what you’re doing and be like, Oh, this was never set in stone. I always was a little improvisational here. But then with other people, you have to give some direction. You can’t just be like, “You’re on your own. Figure it out.”
Cole: Honestly, there’s a beauty to improvisation, and there’s also a beauty to performing compositions the way that they are. So it’s an interesting balancing act for me, finding improvisation versus recreation.
Briana: Yeah. It’s difficult because you want things to feel open and like there’s the possibility that something could happen. But then also, sometimes it’s nice when something just hits really hard, like, “We both came in at this moment, just like we talked about!” [Laughs.]
Cole: Totally.
Self-doubt with creative work has been a huge hurdle for me. There’s something beautiful in learning how to overcome that and get in touch with your inner voice — and that was something in the write up of your record that I really resonated with, and in some of the lyrics. I feel like having a band has, in a helpful way, brought some of that up again, of needing to re-face some of that unsure-ness. You know what I mean? Because it’s such a process to get over it as a solo artist, and having a band, suddenly I’m like, Oh, wait, now I’m responsible for other people. I’m reapproaching the self-doubt hurdles. Between doing collaborative work or solo work, do you find that popping up in different or similar ways?
Briana: I think it comes up in both, but yeah, it’s very different. I think in the solo work. It’s so easy to tear myself apart, and in a way that I would never do to anyone else. I would never treat anyone as badly as I treat myself.
Cole: Yeah.
Briana: This record happened in grad school, and I was going through a big transition in my artistic practice. I was like, “I’m not going to make pop music anymore! I want to make whatever is my inner music.” But then it’s hard because sometimes you’re just making something and you’re like, This sucks. No one would like this. Do I like this? Why do I make music that’s this? Why can’t I make something that’s cool? But then I think the more and more I push that voice out, I actually am making something that’s more me. And even though that can be hard in moments, like cringey, I think people want to hear that. Not that I’m making it for other people, ever — I want to make it for me. There’s just something about when you do make it really for yourself and can push the self doubt out of your mind, I think people hear that and it makes them want to connect to that part of themself.
Cole: It feels more honest to some sort of unseen vision, or something. Your internal invisible compass knows. It’s just dialing into it and getting rid of those critical voices.
