Mood Board is our column where artists share with us a few of the things that inspired their new record. This time, the Toronto-based artist Carlyn Bezic, aka Jane Inc., gives us some insight into the art, music, and writing that helped shape A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH — out today on Telephone Explosion.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
1. Paintings by Julie Mehretu
I’ve admired her work since I was in art school, and her paintings were a reference I drew upon for the visual language of the album. I sent images to Kirk Lisaj, who took the cover photo, with an idea that I would be almost inside the painting, like the world was shattering around me, or a windshield was breaking into a million pieces, or I was breaking apart. We didn’t end up using that imagined cover, and Mehretu’s work is concerned with different conceptual ideas, but I feel the paintings have an emotional spirit that lives in the album. A sense of movement, breaking apart, an attempt to document in detail something overwhelming and vast…
2. Daft Punk’s Discovery
Goes so hard, stays so fun. If we were ever in a rut this was an easy album to go back to to help solve the problem.
3. Kylie Minogue’s Fever
Edwin and I were definitely thinking of her hits in this era — “Love At First Sight” and “Come Into My World” especially. They’re light, bouncy, kind of Euro. Colourful iMac and iBook era. Something to offset (or contrast? Or maybe heighten?) the heaviness of some of the lyrics.
4. The prom scene from Carrie
This was another reference I had for the cover art. I love Brian De Palma so much and I feel he always has an aesthetic influence working on me. It’s the point when Carrie is pushed to the edge, and all this rage she was repressing explodes out of her, and she becomes powerful and monstrous. I found it had some parallels to the transformation of Carlyn to Jane in my album, and I had some earlier demos that didn’t make it onto the record that explored this more deeply, with Jane as a Frankenstein-esque figure.
5. “Loot” by Nadine Gordimer
This story inspired “levelled,” one of the songs that was written early on in the album process. I feel like a lot of the imagery exists in other songs as well, or informed their spirit: a tectonic shift, an apocalyptic scene, a tidal wave, the profound and the mundane existing together. A Hokusai features largely. The images continue to rattle around in my head.
(Feature Photo Credit: Kirk Lisaj)
