MOTTE, AKA Anita Clark is a violinist and composer hailing from Ōhinehou Lyttelton, whose atmospheric, expressive instrumentals and haunting vocals play on your heartstrings like, well, a violin. With a new album out and a tour to follow, Cityscape caught up with her to find out a little more about her many projects.
We love the Cold + Liquid album. How are you feeling about it all? So stoked and also relieved that the album is being released to the world, and very grateful that Ben Goldberg’s Ba Da Bing! Records wanted to pick the album up.
The ‘Only I’ video is beautiful and conceptual – what’s the feeling you’re looking to convey here? The video was a collaboration between me and dancer Jareen Wee, she absolutely had the reins with how she wanted to move to that song in the filming. Aside from that, I have the conceptual notion that this song comes from an imaginary horror film soundtrack, not so much from the lyrics, but there were some slightly offbeat mixing decisions in line with this notion. So, the video being quite simplistic, I did specifically want to film it in a black room, have studio blue and red light and a lot of haze to parallel that thought.
Tell us the story of how MOTTE came to be. An old flatmate of mine, Lucette, was running a show called Strange Bedfellows in Lyttelton where she paired off a bunch of different creatives, including me, who then had two weeks to come up with a collaborative performance. I was paired up with a children’s book illustrator Helen Taylor. In searching for what to do, Helen pulled out a story that she had previously written and subsequently hidden away, to which I decided to make a soundtrack to. My good friend James Sullivan sat me down in front of his gear, which included a Boss DD-20 delay pedal, reverb, overdrive, and a Tascam 4 track tape recorder, showed me how to use them, and away I went. It immediately seemed a very natural way for me to write music, my violin through that setup. After recording the soundtrack for that project, James again encouraged me to keep recording to the end of the cassette tape, which I did one night with quarter of a bottle of vodka and some poppy tea, and that became my first album Songs For Movies.
Give us your take on the music for Cold + Liquid. There is a combination of more traditional song structures, songs with vocals and lyrics, and also a very filmic feel to it, soundscapes and atmosphere. Lots of violin, guitar, synth, voice, and then a whole world of collected sounds and extended techniques. I wanted the album to feel otherworldly, expansive and galactic, but I also have a lot of sampled sound gathered from around me, so without meaning to, I’ve also made it sound very localised to where and when I made the album.
We understand it went through a bit of a transformation towards the end of recording – what was that experience like? When I decided to make a new album I was several months into a vocal cord paralysis diagnosis. I couldn’t sing or barely talk, so along with trying to heal my nervous system, I had decided to focus on a creative project to take my mind off things. It was initially going to be an entirely instrumental album, but by the time I had booked the recording time in, my voice had healed enough to warrant rapidly writing some vocal tracks for the album. I think I wrote three vocal songs in a week, which felt like a real achievement!
How do you think Cold + Liquid differs from your previous album Strange Dreams? Me and Michael Summerfield recorded Strange Dreams really quickly, I wanted something I could take to Aus when I toured there. I think of it as a really minimalistic album, the bare bones, and sounded like me playing it live. Thinking about creating Cold + Liquid, I wanted to implode upon that and make the macro version of. Since releasing Strange Dreams I’ve done a bit of film soundtrack work, so I’ve taken those new ways of thinking on board too.
You’ve played with a wide range of New Zealand artists over the years, including Marlon Williams, Nadia Reid and The Phoenix Foundation. What do you like most about these kinds of collaborations? I love being in a supportive and accompanying role playing in other artists' music. I feel like my strength lies in being a bit of a chameleon and I really enjoy trying to find the most beautiful or appropriate way to amplify whatever emotion is being conveyed in a song. It’s similarly satisfying producing film soundtracks too. I’m always having to upskill in a way, like for the Phoenix Foundation Friend Ship tour I played a lot of keys and percussion which I hadn’t done a lot of, and switching between playing NZSO arranged string parts and then soaring overdriven violin lines like guitar solos for other songs. On the upcoming Don McGlashan tour, he’s asked me to play some mandolin which is great. And I love singing backing vocals a lot.
Violin is getting a lot of respect in pop, rock and electronic music these days. What makes it such a transcendent instrument? I love so many styles of violin playing, but top influential violinists in popular music for me are John Cale, Tony Conrad and Laurie Anderson. And I know they’re not exactly current, but I guess it’s the way that violin can morph expressively into different instruments that attracts me. Especially if you play through guitar pedals and an amp, there’s a magic thing that happens when you run some gain through the strings. I’m also such a sucker for shimmery string sections, and no matter what kind of music it is, a good string section will always make a track sound more lush, expensive and fancy.
What’s the most out-there musical project you’ve been involved in? Performing a live soundtrack to Kyah Dove’s erotic horror To Cut A Mermaid’s
Tongue for Experimental Dance week, NZ, 2020. With feminist and horror themes, nudity, fake blood, all the fun musical horror tropes I wanted to play with, the show was also on my birthday and it was extremely fun to be part of.
What was your favourite show to play live? I played a great house party in Hobart, Tasmania in someone’s garden shed with a whole night of really fun awesome bands. At the Hamilton Arts Fest in the gardens, me and Riki Gooch played a set each by the Waikato. It was in the evening with a bright moon, the ground was swampy, there were crickets and other insects everywhere and I reckon a bat screeched from across the river! And also for Space Place in the dome at the Wellington Observatory.
And what do you like most about working on solo music? Having the complete overview to really delve into a different – my own – world. And I feel proud being able to step back from a project like this and realise, for the most part, everything has come from my own brain. I love a good collaboration, but I am enjoying the succinct feeling of truly creating a body of work.
How do you think growing up in Christchurch has influenced your music? Not sure exactly, but I do know that I missed the ‘South Island sound’ when I lived in Wellington. I also don’t really know what that is, except things being a bit more gothic, grimier and darker. I did grow up with music, Dad has been a bluegrass guitarist from his early 20s on, so I grew up with folk music initially.
If you didn’t play the violin, what other instrument do you think you’d like to master? I’d like to play the theremin.
What’s something people probably don’t know about you? I wish I lived in a world of the bad ‘70s cookbook aesthetic. I love to collect fake fruit and vegetables, display food, silverware and crystal glasses, and tacky cookbooks with extravagant food photography.
Do you have a favourite spot in Ōtautahi? I live in Ōhinehou, so I would have to say Lyttelton and Banks Peninsula. Walking around the red zone is fun, and also the Botanic Gardens.
What’s coming up next for you this year? I’ll be touring this album in October which I’m looking forward to, and I’ll have a special guest alongside to help me play it! I’ll be playing with Don McGlashan and the Others for the New Zealand Australia tour in October and November. I have a few soundtrack projects, notably with Kyah Dove and To Cut A Mermaid’s Tongue dance film work, and also with Caroline Bindon with a virtual reality dance film work for the end of the year.