Q&A: HIRONS’ DEBUT EP ‘FUTURE PERFECT’ EXISTS OUTSIDE OF LABELS
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KYLEE WIENS ☆
IF BRIAN ENO, LAURIE ANDERSON, AND IMOGEN HEAP HAD A MUSICAL LOVECHILD—in a post-apocalyptic world, it might sound something like Hirons. Experimental and otherworldly, Hirons’ sound exists in the liminal—soft, powerful and unyielding to genre convention. Pop elements blend with textured soundscapes and glittery production to create a wholly unique listening experience.
British-American songwriter Jenny Hirons sings of childhood dreams, capitalist hellscapes and natural imagery in an alluring and whimsical tone. The result is an Alice in Wonderland-esque journey through the real and surreal, the beautiful and mundane, and the earthly and ethereal.
The Luna Collective recently sat down with Hirons to discuss her musical influences, production techniques, and approach to songwriting as a new musician. Read below for more, and find Future Perfect on all streaming platforms.
Photo By Jamie Lee Taete
LUNA: What inspired the overall sound and direction of this EP?
HIRONS: Oh, God. I don't know that there was one singular source of inspiration. Nothing singular comes to mind, but it was kind of the amalgamation of a bunch of experiments. I started songwriting—it's relatively new for me—so I started songwriting about seven years ago. With all the little experiments in songwriting that I was making, I decided to put that into a record and this is what came out. I don't really have a singular source of inspiration.
LUNA: How do you approach blending more experimental elements with some pop sensibilities as well?
HIRONS: I mean, that probably does just come down to my taste. I think one thing I can say is that I have always listened to a really, really wide variety of different musical influences, but I have also always appreciated pop music. So I think it probably just comes down to all the various things that I've listened to. And perhaps it's also something that came out of the process of the songwriting, which kind of started with playing around with Logic and software inside the computer. Then, you know, I'd begin with a simple melody. I realized that was what worked best for me with songwriting—beginning with something simple and then layering from there. So it may also be to do with a mixture of the things I listen to and the process of songwriting itself.
LUNA: Could you tell me a little bit more about your musical diet and your diverse array of influences?
HIRONS: Yeah. I mean, ironically, when I'm actually writing music, I'm not listening to a lot of stuff. But I think while I was writing this, I kind of had a new appreciation for some of the greats, you know. I was actually listening to people like the Beach Boys and Brian Eno and David Bowie. Of course, I was extremely familiar with them already, but I was kind of listening to them with new ears because the process, as I say, was also quite a novel one. I’ve only started songwriting in the last few years, so I was hearing them in a different way—like sonically, hearing them differently.
And then, yeah, it really is quite wide-ranging. When I was growing up, one of my really big influences was Deerhoof, partly because they seemed to be doing something completely unique, like I hadn’t heard before. And then, of course, they have that amazing energy. I also listen to classical music as well—you know, my basis is piano, that’s my main instrument—and I’ve always been really moved by the real emo classical composers such as Rachmaninoff. I’ve definitely always had an appreciation for music, especially when I was younger. I used to really seek out music that seemed strange to me, and the weirder it was, the better.
LUNA: What kickstarted your songwriting career?
HIRONS: I really think it has a lot to do with moving to L.A. Yeah. I moved to L.A. ten years ago, and it was the first time in my life since childhood that I’d actually had the space to own a piano. I’ve been playing piano since I was six, but when I stopped lessons at 14, I never had my own piano again. I would just play whenever I had access to one, wherever that may be. So I finally had the space to get a piano, and that kind of launched a whole new thing for me. I was playing it all the time.
I think also, kind of accidentally, I ended up meeting a lot of musicians. Suddenly, I had this access to it in a way that I’d never had before. I’d never really been in the music scene anywhere else, and I was hearing firsthand from friends of mine that are musicians about their songwriting process. It suddenly felt really accessible and like a fertile time to experiment with that stuff. I was really interested to do so. I feel lucky that it kind of came about like this clear opening—this little window to explore it.
LUNA: Do you feel like you identify strongly with a particular genre or musical movement or do you prefer to exist outside those labels?
HIRONS: I mean, probably like anyone would say, the ideal thing would be you want to be seen for your individuality—you hope to exist outside of labels. But I think if I identified with anything, it might come back to what I was saying before—that I’ve always had an appreciation for music that seemed unusual or experimental. Not just for the sake of it, but in essence, very experimental. So, you know, I would love for people to see that in my music and hopefully not identify too many other labels.
LUNA: Absolutely. I know you’re a visual artist as well. How do those elements tie into your musical world?
HIRONS: I think the songwriting process—when I kind of locked into what worked for me—I realized there was a similarity to the way that I work as a designer, which is that I’m particularly inspired and propelled when I begin with a simple starting point and then layer up from there, as opposed to trying to draw the entire picture. When I first started songwriting, a lot of my experimentations were really, really detailed things, and bringing it back to a simple starting point sort of opened me up creatively. And yeah, I kind of work in a similar way in design.
LUNA: What have you learned about yourself as a person throughout the process of making the record?
HIRONS: I think making the record was quite a challenge at every stage because none of it quite felt within my grasp, since it’s all new territory. So it was exciting, but I had to work through a great deal of insecurity as well. I think it was another moment of realizing that I can do it. I gained confidence in the process of making this record. It was a confidence that was extremely meaningful to me, because music has always been there, and I proved to myself that I could, you know, write songs. It was a newfound confidence, definitely, that came about as a result of making this record.
LUNA: Is there anything else you would want listeners to know about you, your music or your future plans?
HIRONS: I think for the next record—this is just a five-track EP—I’d like to do a full-length LP at some point. I think also right now, the songwriting, as I described it to you, is quite different from the kind of improvisational music that I have always done for myself and for my own pleasure. They sound extremely different, and I think I’m interested in trying to bring them together somehow. Hopefully, I’ll begin to explore that on the next record.
