Femme Angel
TAPE Music, 2017
Laura Bettinson’s music juxtaposes involved rhythms and intriguing sonic textures with catchy vocals, making it an engaging listen for beard-stroking electronica enthusiasts and lovers of pure pop alike.
Future Music descended on Laura’s West London studio to find out how she created the balmy, house-inspired Angel and learn more about her unusual songwriting process.
The idea for Angel came from an ad lib that you did for a different project…
“Yeah, it was like a random topline for a thing that I got sent. I quite regularly get sent instrumentals from people looking for vocals. I can’t even remember what the original instrumental was, but it was one of those ones where you bang a few out and some of them get used and a lot of them don’t. So when it came to writing new music after getting back in the studio, I was like ‘Where the hell do I start?’ I started looking to see if I had any half started projects on the go. I found that little topline and thought, ‘It’s a pretty catchy little thing’, so I just cut it up as a sample and then started working on it from there as a brand new track.”
Where was the track recorded?
“In my home studio, though I’ve just recently moved house so I’m setting up a new studio at my place now. The studio where we shot the video, that’s a new thing for me, that’s a company called F Block. I’ve just recently taken a room there a couple of days a week as a producer to work on other people’s stuff, co-writing sessions and things like that. It’s my first experience of being in a studio building with other people making music, I’ve always been at home on my own, sitting in isolation, so it’s quite nice to be in a building where there’s music pounding through the walls and people putting their heads in. It’s cool to be to be around other people making music; it’s quite a new thing for me.”
“I’ll be honest, the lyrics to Angel are just complete and utter fucking nonsense. They’re just phonetic gibberish that I sang in. A lot of it was just mumbling, mumbling, mumbling until you can kind of pick out certain words and you think ‘maybe that’s a starting point.”
What inspired Angel's vibe and lyrics?
“I’ve always made upbeat, sunny, feel good music. I’m not sure whether that’s a reaction to having spent eleven years living in a very grey, rainy, cold London. Somehow I’ve always gravitated towards that kind of music. I think it was because when I was growing up that my parents bought me up a lot of Motown and a lot of feel-good soul music. I guess I’ve always use music to kind of pull me out of a hole rather than make lots of depressing kind of sad music, so I really don’t do sad music very often. As such I’ve ended up making quite upbeat, sunshine, kind of aspirational tunes.
“I’ll be honest, the lyrics to Angel are just complete and utter fucking nonsense. They’re just phonetic gibberish that I sang in. I love doing that, I did a lot of it in the other band that I’m in, ultraísta, with Nigel Godrich and Joey Waronker. A lot of it was just mumbling, mumbling, mumbling until you can kind of pick out certain words and you think, ‘Maybe that’s a starting point.’ I guess it’s using the voice and the sound of the words you’re using as a musical instrument and a bit of texture as well rather than it having to be like linear songwriting.”
You talk about Angel being a happy piece of music, but there’s a bit of melancholy in there too.
“I love that push and pull between a melancholy lyric and the upbeat piece of music behind it all, or vice versa. I guess all of that is just adding to the sonic journey of that song. I knew I had to take it somewhere halfway through and let up on the relentless marimbas, to give myself a little bit of peace for a second!”
There’s a fair bit of vocal processing in the track, how do you perform it live?
“Right now I’m performing it live with two people helping me out, the Bullet Girls! I’m much more into my DJing these days so Traktor is running a lot of the track. We’ve got that running into a Kaoss Pad – it’s just super fun manipulating that whole thing and being able to really fuck shit up. Alongside that I’ve got my Roland SP-555 sampler, so we’re triggering in a lot of the standalone loops some of the vocal samples from that. I’ve also got my mic feeding into that so I can do that pitched-down ‘male’ vocal bit by using the Voice Transformer effect. Then we’ve got the Korg minilogue synth which is doubling up a lot of the synth lines. So all three of us switch up positions throughout the set depending on what tune we are playing, and sometimes even halfway through the track. So it’s much more like a club set, but with live elements and live manipulation.”