Lotte Kestner
Interview
Friday 6th of June 2008
By Haydon SLotte Kestner is most likely a new name to our readers (and I know it's not your name either!). Tell us about yourself.
Most people never got my real name right anyway (Anna-Lynne). It feels curiously natural having people address me as Lotte on Myspace. Lotte Kestner is a borrowed name, she is a real woman from the 1700's who inspired a character in The Sorrows of Young Werther. I was reading that book at a memorable time in my life, when I was touring France. And I came upon the name again when I was just starting this solo project. It's usually hard for me to commit to names of albums and songs, but pretty much all of the names associated with this project were effortless and felt right. Even songs like 'Temperature', where the word doesn't appear in the song anywhere...
While this is a solo record, you've been in Trespassers William for a fair few years now. Can you tell us about what led you to make a solo record alongside your work with TW?
Yeah I've been playing with Trespassers since I was just out of high school.
I've brought everything decent I've written to the band, and those songs have been elaborated and transformed. Different Stars in particular was a rather simple, organic album, so at that point I don't think it would've crossed my mind to release a solo album, it wouldn't have been a very different statement. But our sound has become more complex, losing the acoustic guitars and pianos and incorporating a lot more percussion and synths and effects. Especially on the new material we've been performing for the last 2 years.
In the meantime, I'd also been getting really into the Naturalismo artists (Devendra Benhart etc) and experimental vocal layering (CocoRosie etc). But I was the only one in the band who was enchanted by traditional folk type melodies, and their major keys and simple structures. So I found that I was writing all these songs that weren't working with the band and sounded quite nice without anything on them. I put up the first couple on Myspace and people seemed to like them, so I started writing particularly for the solo project.
I think in a way it's a bigger challenge for me to try to write something that is rather traditional sounding and still engaging. And beyond that, to leave the work bare, without the accompaniment of expensive instruments, and for the most part to not even use any reverb.
On a pragmatic note, this is the first time in a long while that we haven't been on a label, so it made sense to take advantage of the fact that no one had any deadlines for me, and I was free to own and promote my own music.
How was the writing/recording process for the album?
Originally I figured I'd go through my old song books and bring a few back to life for this project. But in the end, all of the songs were written specifically for this project. I wrote and recorded all of the songs in my bedroom over a period of about 9 months. I would sit on the bed with an acoustic guitar and come up with the melodies, then labour over the lyrics a bit if they didn't come right away. Then scoot over a few feet to the floor where the recording gear was set up and try to record it while it was really fresh. A lot of the songs are first takes. For a few, I was even too impatient to set up a click track, and just recorded the acoustic guitar and vocals live in one take. Then I would add about 10 tracks of other sounds... bells, vocals sung through plastic toys, harp, whatever sounded good.
All of them were written that way, except for 'Fineline', which I came up with in the parking lot of Trader Joe's and sang into my cell phone and then went home and recorded it with a keyboard.
I had a few friends add parts to the albums, Ross and Jeff recorded their own parts at home. And I took my little set-up over to Toby's house to record her violins for 'Temperature'.
Do you have a favourite song on the album? If so, what about it is special to you?
'Crush the Bird' is my favourite. It was also the last one written and recorded, so it has a slight advantage from being newest. And so it comes first on the album. I was the most heartbroken when I wrote that one, and I think it sounds the most honest. And it's the only one I recorded when I was a little bit drunk. It's one of the ones where the vocal and guitar were recorded live together, and they were both running into a guitar reverb pedal on one of the more extreme room settings. So there's a strong sense of place, even thought it's not really a real place.
What motivates/inspires you to write songs? Who are some of your influences?
I only write when I am really creatively driven to. I never assign myself time to work on music. There'll just be a melody all of a sudden, or a sentence I can't wait to sing. Often it's after I've heard an amazing song by someone else, or realized something about my life. Often movies put me in the mood to play music. Most of the songs are fictionally autobiographical.
About my relationships, or my fear of getting old, or my wariness of being on a stage and judged too much.
I probably spend more time reading than consuming other kinds of art, so Proust and Fowles and Maugham have been big influences over the last decade.
Lisa Germano and Kate Bush are two songwriters who I have loved since I first started writing music. Kings of Convenience, Will Oldham, Mark Kozelek...
I know that as well as your musical work, you have an anthology of poetry available. Do you see yourself as a poet first or a musician, or is the delineation not as straightforward as that?
I started off with poetry. I wrote it all day long, at school, at work... But when I started to learn some guitar chords when I was 16, music eclipsed everything else I was doing. By the time I graduated from college, I'd pretty much given up writing the poetry and stories that I had been so into, which is a real shame to me now.
I was intoxicated by the fact that songs could accomplish so much in a few minutes, that rhyming made everything so easy to write, and that I could play those songs that same weekend at a coffee house and people would listen. Music seemed to achieve the sort of communication I was going for, that poetry had not done.
From your past touring in the UK with TW with acts like Damien Rice, and having your records out on Bella Union, you have quite a following here. Is there any chance that we'll be seeing Lotte Kestner on the live circuit here?
That would be ideal. Particularly for Trespassers William, we know that the majority of people who listen to us live in Europe. And even from the solo record sales (since I sell them from home myself) I can see that more than half of the fans are in France, the UK or Scandinavia. Touring in Europe feels very exotic compared to the US, I wish I had the means to travel there often (for music or even just to be there) but I'm my own label at the moment...
Do you think that there will be a solo follow-up to China Mountain? What are your hopes for the record?
Really the whole goal was just to write and record something on my own, and make it available to people. So that part is done. I don't tend to play many instruments in Trespassers (most of my guitar parts are just for the sake of writing the song, and then we take them out of the recordings), so it was an exciting exercise to be left on my own. Ideally, some beautiful indie film would use one of the songs. That would be perfect.
I am uncertain about another solo album. I feel like I want to collaborate with someone next time around. One of the things I've been doing lately is singing some harmonies for a friend's band here in Seattle at her shows, and there's a third singer as well, and having three girls singing together is so much fun after being the lone singer for over ten years. I think I am more than ready to take a step back and not be singing all the time. It's fun listening on stage, too.
I gather that TW is close to finishing up on a new record also. When do you think we'll be likely to be able to wrap our ears around that one?
I feel comfortable saying some time this year. That one was started as soon as Having was completed, even before it came out. It's a really elaborate record, and many of the songs have been re-written several times. We mixed the album quickly in a studio last year, but we have decided to take more time with it at home to get it the way we really want it. One of the songs, 'Catch not Break', is up on our Myspace page, but that might not be the ultimate mix that makes the album. That's one of my favourites from the upcoming album.
Are there any new bands/artists you've been digging on recently that you think our readers should check out?
My favourite new artist is Bon Iver. What a beautiful record. It's the first thing I've heard in a while that I want to listen to over and over.
What does the rest of 2008 hold for Lotte Kestner?
I haven't figured out if Lotte is something I can make work live yet. If I do figure it out, then some shows around the West coast would be nice. In the months ahead, I'm planning to collaborate with John Grant (from The Czars) and I believe I'll be on the upcoming Minotaur Shock album. I have three or four new songs waiting to be recorded, but I have to decide which project they would work best for.
Any final thoughts?
Just thanks to the people who have been really responsive to the music over the last year and a half. If it were not for Myspace and being able to make all of the songs available as I recorded them, and hear from real people what they thought of them, I probably would've kept it all to myself and not completed a whole album's worth. I'm pretty happy about the internet right now.
http://www.the-mag.me.uk/Music/Articles/Item/Lotte-Kestner-Interview-20080606/
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