scroll or use your keys
// Letters to YVYNYL //
premiere: Sheers - Depth
/ The warm movements hold cold reverberations from the low hum permeating this track, a place that feels difficult to turn away from Lily Sheers’ work. And oh, that organ! Ultimately, I am transfixed to these works that use mixed media within outside elements of craft: dance, film, color. Join this incantation for the deeper we go into this autumn song.
Hey Mark,
Firstly, I admire what you do and the music you choose to feature on YVYNYL, and the letters from artists are brilliant. I’ve spent perhaps too many hours of life wondering why I write songs, why anyone should listen, and what good it does. As a classically trained choral singer and harpist, I’ve never been certain “pop” music is the place for me. Regardless, I’m putting my best efforts into this project, hoping that if I go about it genuinely, someone will connect with my work. Anyway, I love the Letters to YVYNYL because they make listening a more personal experience.
“Depth” was an intuitively-written song. I started with only a simple bass line and a vocal melody so that the space between the two could be an instrument in itself. Working with the musical representation of distance, the autobiographical lyrics are about the isolating effects of emotional independence. At the time I thought it easier to miss people than to maintain vulnerable relationships, despite a resultant battle between the emotional and logical self.
After fleshing out the song more, I recorded the track with Scott Schaus, and our mutual friend Hasan Mahmood came up with the video’s premise, which I think is a great reflection of the song’s sentiment. The one-shot video (truly one shot, no cheats!) features the improvised dancing of Juliette Nolan. While she represents the emotional aspect of “Depth,” I act as the inhuman, a-emotional counterpart ignoring her presence. We laid out the setting to echo feelings of isolation and duality, accented by Kayla Newell’s defiant paintings.
I remember the first time Hasan asked me about the meaning of the “Depth,” I blushed and gave the briefest answer possible. For someone who writes songs about fear of vulnerability, speaking about the meaning of lyrics is also utterly terrifying. The process of completing and putting out this music video has proven befitting, I suppose. Each step has challenged me to reveal more of my emotional self. Here I am now, writing you with more detail than I could not have comfortably imagined upon creating “Depth.” It still makes me a little nervous, but if it’s for the sake of giving a genuine account, so be it.
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the video and this bit of backstory. Let me know if you have questions I left unanswered.
Cheers,
Lily Sheers
Submit your story to Letters to YVYNYL.
premiere: Schaus - After Work
/ The ego echo voices in this creepy cool video has hypertext notions of traveling throughout the desert. It resonates with me. Having done a lot of this myself, years ago, the song feels buried in sand, or blasted by the sun. I’ll let Schaus tell you more:
Hey Mark,
I want to start by saying that I really appreciate yvynyl’s dedication to the message and statements of artists and I am regularly listening to your posts on Soundcloud. Frankly, this whole process of selling myself keeps me going back into the vision of truth. I feel like your avenue sets a precedent for unveiling truth, and it compels me to divulge for some strange reason. Over thinking this already.
It’s been a battle between confidence, patience, memory and my closest relationships to get through making this album. It’s odd that through that, the last song I wrote would be the single I would really try to put effort into. I wrote this song in a pretty isolated moment in my life, driving aimlessly around the Southwest. People joked it was some sort of vision quest. I’ve always found that, as trite as it is, when I’m improvising during songwriting - I say things to illustrate where I’m at more clearly than I can just consciously focus on.
“After Work” lyrically, reveals bits of immediate truth, metaphorical truth and bits of truth that only exist internally. “Wait til after work…” isn’t just one person, there’s a real person and a fictional one. The way humans project people to be things in our minds and reconciling with the actuality. It’s not to say that the fictional image negates the source, but it’s never really knowing the truth.
I tried to do as much as humanly possible with this track and video, hence the battles I alluded to earlier. Technically, the main help I got was around mastering, some friendly guidance and the texturing/finishing touches on the video but I want to maintain that this package embodies a vision I had. The video itself plays into some surreal and heavily symbolic imagery that’s meant to invite interpretation on each object.
Starting at a distance, the cameras work their way through the sands - investigating each object. These illustrate a world of desire and entertainment related symbols such as gold and oil for the former with roller coasters and basketballs with the latter. The arch here is that Barthes and Baudrillard would say that these are means of control and oppression. Lyrically, this goes back to the control that working has on us all, we’re tied to these desires and we reward ourselves with entertainment and repeat ad nauseam.
Inside the square temple, is kinda the source I was talking about earlier. A place of creativity and love unbounded by some of these constructs that exist outside. It’s explored but we’re brought back outside into the system. The cameras, drones and walls all serve to keep everything under control but as the wall rises, the invisible hand becomes visible. Some of this is certainly pulling directly from current politics. In this realization, the video journeys back inside and back to the centerpiece: the lion. The lion reflects the creativity of the washes of paints and mutates with every angle of the camera. It’s in the last section of the song, that the phrase’s powerlessness has become realized and the space becomes truly boundless as the paint strokes float past in multicolor.
It’s difficult to encapsulate all the trains of thought going through me with this piece and I’m open to a dialog if you have any questions. I’ve got the simpler artist statement in the description of the video but I wanted to give you more – I hope it’s not overwhelming.
Happy to answer any additional questions you may have. Thank you so much for your time and attention.
-Schaus
Read more Letters to YVYNYL.
