Dazed

Dazed is a British magazine, launched in 1991, that focuses on music, fashion, film, art, and literature.

Grimes has been interviewed for Dazed twice, once in 2012, and another in 2015.

• 2011/Jun
• 2011/Jul
• 2012
• 2015
• 2015/Q&A
• 2019

Dazed/2011/Jun/Interview

Interview

Grimes Video Premiere: Rasik

We present the new video from the 22-year-old Montrealer who fuses Kate Bush influences with modern interpretations

26th July 2011
Text Dazed Digital

On a bizarre and melancholic pop tip, 22-year-old Claire Boucher aka Grimes from Montréal takes her personal influences from Bjork and Kate Bush to form a new vocal-based electronic sound. Her debut record 'Geidi Primes' is now being re-released on No Pain In Pop after it made its first appearance on Montreal’s Arbutus Records as a free download and cassette in early 2010. Her new single 'Halfaxa' is out now on Lo Recordings which can be streamed/bought on CD & Double LP. We speak to Boucher before she sets out her on European tour this autumn and present her brand new video for 'Rasik'.

WHAT'S…

...your secret talent?
Impersonations, making popcorn.

...your worst vice?
Drugs and alcohol.

…the story behind your name?
It's a secret

... your favourite sound?
The ocean

...your worst fashion secret?
Love black hoodies a lot

...your favourite website?
Gmail? Haha. I dunno, I don't really use the internet.

... good for breakfast?
Banana and yoghurt

...the best thing about where you're from?
The ocean

...at the top of your shit list?
Is a shit list something I hate? Probably like, ambivalence.

...are you listening to now?
Blood Orange! Cop Car Bonfire, Tropical Adventure, new D'eon.

How would you describe your work?
Experimental, feminine, avant-pop.

Interview

Grimes is a new breed of pop star. The creation of 23-year-old artist Claire Boucher, her music comes from the most experimental of places — her latest album Visions was written in a three week, speed-fuelled period of solitude in Montréal during which she barely slept or showered — yet she counts TLC and Aphex Twin as equal influences and has toured with Lykke Li. She's an ex-goth who has the fashion world going gaga but dresses day-to-day like a grunge kid, in oversized rap t-shirts borrowed from her step-brother. Her left hand is covered in tattoos she's given herself, including the number 8 (her lucky number), an alien head and a line that traces her wrist like a bracelet. Further up her arm is her most recent hand-drawn tattoo: a Sierpinski triangle, a symbol of infinity. There's no smoke and mirrors with Grimes — what you see and hear is really what you get.

"Pop music is really interesting because it's an expression of sheer sensuality", she explains, sitting on a hotel terrace in her hometown of Vancouver. The sun has set but she doesn't seem to notice the cold in a battered fur coat that used to belong to her grandma, and big, black combat boots. "When I hear Toxic by Britney Spears... people say that s*** is vapid but you can hear that the people who made that song were having a great f***ing time. I would love to do that. That's the thing I think is really beautiful about pop music. I try and mix that up with other s*** because I like music that can be really challenging but, at the end of the day, Grimes is about what feels best".

Boucher is acutely aware of the balancing act she's playing: "I can make dumb f***ing hits all day. That's almost the issue — there is so much of that in my computer but that's obviously not how I want Grimes to be perceived".

How does she want to be perceived? She takes a sip from a mug of tap water, having refused anything from the mini-bar. "If there's anything that would mean something to me as an artist, I would want to be part of the cultural dialogue. Not just a meme or popular or whatever. Like when they're making documentaries about No Wave and they talk about those artists involved like Lydia Lunch — those people are now permanently part of the cultural dialogue. That would be my dream. I would rather have respect among a small group of people and be considered important and innovative than be widely successful and make tons of money".

With Visions, she is on the verge of having both. It's a powerful record that somehow manages to feel both avant-garde and accessible, that explores ideas of physicality and perception through a pop lens. She created everything, from the beats and lyrics to the cover art and videos. At the album's heart is Be A Body (侘寂), Boucher's favourite track on the album. It was written partly in response to Post Physical, Denver producer Pictureplane's ode to the internet age, and partly due to a newfound love of R&B following a tour with Brooklyn's lo-fi R&B crooner How to Dress Well. "It's probably the song on the record that takes most from the contemporary dialogue, I would say".

On the flip side, Symphonia IX (My Wait Is U) is as poignantly personal as pop can get: "Since I've been doing this I kind of had to end a three-year relationship. It's s***ty but I just can't be in a relationship. I'm at a point in my life when I couldn't sacrifice doing something like this for something like that. So that song's about choosing to make art and be successful as opposed to being gratified socially or in love".

That's not all Boucher has sacrificed for her art: "I have horrible insomnia and the only time I sleep is when I'm in a relationship. I went to bed way after the sun rose yesterday and woke up two hours later. That's just how I roll". The insomnia gives her a slightly hyper but endearing edge. She drops crazy stories the way other people discuss the weather.

"One of my favourite memories from high school is being accused of throwing a snowball at the Queen", she says, apropos of nothing. "She was driving through Vancouver for some reason. It was a snow day and everyone was outside. The teachers were like, "If anyone throws a snowball, the consequences will be huge". Everyone was obviously so amped up, waiting to see if anyone would do it. The Queen drove by and nothing happened. There was this big sigh of relief. Then this single snowball sailed through the air and hit the back of her car. Everyone erupted. It was like a madhouse. I was accused because I was a goth but I didn't throw it".

Another side effect of her insomnia is a nervous energy that means she runs everywhere: when grabbing a coffee from the counter; nipping to the bathroom; and, later that night, helping to get someone into the downtown club that her friend Blood Diamonds is playing at. The two of them make a striking pair: next to the broad, 6ft 7" frame of Blood Diamonds she appears even smaller but they have the same mischievous sense of humour, bouncing quips off each other and calling themselves brats. Against the mainstream backdrop of clean, corporate Vancouver, it seems like Blood Diamonds provides creative refuge to Boucher. He plays a lively set of tropical-ish synth-pop and she joins him on stage at the end for a K-pop song they've written together called Phone Sex. It's fun and energetic; the crowd love it. After DJing together she leaves at 3am but doesn't go to bed, instead spending nine hours editing the footage to her Be A Body (侘寂) video. Like she said, that's how Grimes rolls.

Visions is in fact Boucher's fourth album as Grimes but her first for legendary British label 4AD. Her debut, Geidi Primes, was issued on cassette by Arbutus Records, the Montréal collective/label set up by her manager Seb Cowan. Boucher credits him and Arbutus as crucial to her creative development. The two met in Vancouver but cemented their friendship at university in Montréal, "where everyone cool goes". Boucher initially studied Russian literature before transferring to neuroscience, which, in a roundabout way, also seems to have influenced Grimes: "I've studied the brain and music and we can measure the degree to which electronic impulses are sent off but there's no explanation for how that becomes music in your head. It's just a mystery. It's just magic". She got kicked out for poor attendance just before completing the four year course. She's nonplussed about it — making music's what matters now. Geidi Primes was Grimes at its most embryonic and Boucher seems a little embarrassed by it now. "I would never have made a Dune concept album if I had thought anyone was going to hear it", she laughs. Halfaxa followed, a much bolder, more mature album that found her skirting a rave aesthetic and first developing the Enya-evoking vocal layering that characterises Visions, fluidly slipping from a deep seductive burr to the high-pitched shrill of a creepy alien-child.

"Everyone associates Enya with their parents and dinner but she's crazy. Literally hundreds of her layers of vocals. She was one of my biggest inspirations, as a technician. She was really involved in the production of her records. She's like a genius in my mind", she says, going on to explain: "My voice is really the best tool I have because I don't play any instruments. It's my violin, in a sense".

However it was Darkbloom, last summer's split LP with Montréal artist d'Eon, and specifically the video to album track Vanessa that really catapulted Grimes to an international stage.

"I hate Vanessa! I've always hated Vanessa. As soon as I'd made it I was like, I hate this!" she practically yelps and then laughs. Why? "It's an empty song. Vanessa was literally: I'm going to make a pop song. It had nothing to do with emotions". Conversely, she couldn't be more enthusiastic about the video to Vanessa, which subversively explores ideas of femininity. It's incredibly slick but was made on a budget of just $60 after fashion photographer John Londono encouraged her to try her hand at directing.

"If it wasn't for John, I wouldn't have even thought of making a music video. Until then I hadn't even thought of making an image or anything like that. I hadn't even thought of music as possibly being a career. But when Vanessa came out and that was a thing, I was like... Oh, that's actually a very powerful tool. It was really, really fun and really rewarding. That was a big step in me becoming more mentally powerful. That video changed my mind, my game or whatever. Previous to that it was like running shoes at all times. I've always had crazy hair and s*** but then it was like, why not make everything as beautiful as it can be? Why wouldn't you do that?".

While she notes that it could be construed as frivolous, Boucher is also conscious of the transformative power of clothing. She pulls a black beanie out of her pocket as if to demonstrate and slips it over her long, green-tipped hair. "I wear this hat because it makes me feel like a producer. It makes me feel legitimate constantly dealing with a bunch of guys. For some reason it's my macho hat. I can wear anything and then put this hat on and the boots and then I feel tough".

The transformation from her appearance at last year's South by Southwest festival is striking. With her hair scraped back and in denim shorts and a plain tank top, she looked young and vulnerable at the Gorilla vs. Bear and Mexican Summer showcase but held her own despite the stage swamping her. Just a couple of months later, following the release of the Vanessa video, she was touring with Lykke Li, marking a turning point in her most important evolution: not musical but mental.

"After playing a show in front of 4,000 people, which is pretty much the worst thing I can possibly imagine, it totally broke down all my inhibitions. Before I made music I had really bad social anxiety disorders, I had panic attacks all the time. I was really not a happy person. Since I've started making music it's the first time in my life that I've been a happy person".

Not that happy equates to easy. Boucher has battled, and beaten, intense stage fright to get where she is now: "The first year I couldn't finish a show, I'd be crying after every show. That was a big mental thing — every night this horrible looming thing of having to play this show. But there's something so alive about that. I'm really living a real life". The pain/pleasure thing? "Yeah, and everything being such a risk all the time. And everything being so unstable. It's like, what are we going to do tomorrow? It's very day-by-day. I think that makes time go really slow, which is really nice. When I think about things that happened a couple of months ago, it feels like years ago. I am so afraid of dying that I really want to live as much as possible". She laughs, but she's not joking.

In a throwaway comment in an interview late last year Boucher described her music as "post-internet", but then retracted it on Twitter when the term understandably cropped up in every subsequent interview. She was right though: Grimes personifies the 21st-century collision of cultural ideas and aesthetics, of the mainstream and the underground. With pop's dialogue having been for so long stuck in a tired, never-ending battle to out-sex, out-shock and outshine, Grimes has it in her to be a new kind of pop icon for our times — and she's never been more ready. "For me, music used to be escapism but now it's like, why do I need to escape from my life? Why can't my life just be amazing?".

Throwback Thursday

How Grimes tamed a hawk

'It's important to gain an animal’s respect if you're going to ask it to behave for you'
A live hawk. Givenchy couture. Swan and pheasant crest headpieces. Grimes’ April 2012 Dazed cover shoot, shot by Hedi Slimane, showed the DIY pop artist as a medieval warrior queen in command of her birds of prey. Claire Boucher recalls that day:

Grimes: “My Dazed cover shoot is one of my all time faves. It was my first big cover shoot, and there were Givenchy jewels there that literally had bodyguards and things like this. I was also humbled to be wearing McQueen. It was shot by Hedi, who was using this really fascinating camera and had a real vibe going on because he rarely spoke and was wearing a suit. Plus, I was able to bond with a hawk and his trainer, although at first the hawk didn't respect me very much and cut me up quite a bit. It's important to gain an animal's respect if you're going to ask it to behave for you. When I look at the black and white shot with the hawk in particular, I feel like it's still my favourite picture.  It looks like a shot from La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc.”

Photoshoot

Outtake

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Credits

Photography: Hedi Slimane
Styling: Robbie Spencer
Make-up: Gemma Smith-Edhouse
Hair: Tomo Jidai
Accesories: Givenchy Haute Couture by Riccardo Tisci

Interview

The last time Grimes saw me, I was dressed as a chicken gimp. I'd responded to her Twitter call-out for fans to dance at her upcoming shows, and at London's 2012 Field Day festival I downed a Vodka, shoved on a fluffy white dress and PVC mask and bounded on stage as the space-gun synths of Claire Boucher's bedroom pop project blasted out to 7,000 Londoners and hit them in the heart. To witness her metamorphosis was incredible: she'd arrived a couple of hours before, bundled up in her parka with sunglasses on, having had no sleep and in desperate need of coffee, and now she was like a pop idol from another dimension with the magnetism of Morgan le Fay. Flinging off her cap, Boucher seemed to have gained a new life-force from the screams, lights and smoke as she drenched her burnt-orange hair with water, offering another bottle to me. She smacked her hand down on the sampler to drop the beat, and grinned like an eccentric engineer having a eureka moment.

Three years later, I've ditched the clucky costume and am reunited with Boucher in New York. Walking down Fifth Avenue towards the Guggenheim Museum, she wears a once-bright, now-faded loose vest depicting the comic book superhero Ms. Marvel, and a plaid shirt that she'll later pull off to use as a makeshift blanket. To glance at her, perhaps the only clue that the 27-year-old isn't still a punk playing basement shows in Montréal is an Alexander Wang sneaker bag slung over her shoulder, an item created from classics reworked for a new purpose. In hindsight, it may not have been the best idea to visit one of New York's top tourist destinations on a Sunday in summer, but it's easy to forget that the low-key Boucher is kind-of famous.

The queue snakes out the door at the museum, and she starts getting asked for selfies before we can even get inside. "I can't believe you're here!", gasps a blonde teenager from Europe, pulling out her iPhone as the DIY pop powerhouse pulls a nervy "Where do you want me?" grin. Does this happen often? "If you go to certain parts of Brooklyn it can be weird", says Boucher. "You get recognised but you're not in danger. There's not going to be a swarming. I've only had swarmings a few times". She's looking forward to playing a Dior-sponsored gala at the Guggenheim in November, and quickly darts past a bottleneck of tourists to peer up into the spiralling chasm of the atrium. It is epic in scale, but imperfectly suited to live acoustics. "I see what they were saying about the sound", she frowns.

Boucher has always had a perfectionist bent, and is in the habit of pushing herself to extremes to realise her musical multiverse, whether sneaking into the motocross to mosh with jocks for her breakout video, Oblivion, or cloistering herself within blacked-out windows to record her last album, Visions. With a wildly creative and often subversive aesthetic, she's created some of the most unique records and videos of the decade, drawing from easily recognisable and esoteric styles to create an ultra-modern audio-visual amalgam. As a result, she's become an icon for those that like to blur boundaries, binaries or both, speaking to an audience unusual in scope for an artist on an indie label. In pop's hallowed hall, Boucher may be the one with the home-dyed fringe and odd socks, but it's hard to deny that she electrifies the room.

As we cross Central Park, Boucher happily chats away, words spilling from her mouth like a cranked-open jelly bean machine. She always seems to be testing out new connections and configurations of ideas, prefacing grand political statements with "I don't know if this is an argument I believe in, but...," or describing a new song as "if No Doubt did Studio Ghibli". Talking to her isn't stressful, but her pace can feel intense. Apparently the human brain has 100 trillion synaptic connections; with Boucher you can believe it.

If you look through her millefeuille of vocals, you'll find a highly attuned eco-consciousness on Grimes' new album, which has been through working titles of Fairy, Avalon, and Queen of the Night (after Mozart's supernatural anti-heroine from The Magic Flute, not the Whitney Houston classic). Boucher can't reveal the final name of the album, planning to make this announcement the day before it hits iTunes in October. "Lyrically, it's more political and less abstract than before", she explains. "Like, really trippy free association about nature and s***. There's a song that's from the perspective of a butterfly in the Amazon as people are cutting down trees; there's a song that's from the perspective of angels who are polluted, so they're crying polluted tears. I feel like it's more about the Earth. I think I was more in society when I was making it, so it feels more grounded".

Most artists on the verge of global success see dollar signs. Boucher saw the devil. "Just before the Visions cycle started, I had my tarot done three times in a week", she says. Every time, the cards showed the devil — a powerful arcane symbol of excess, overindulgence and bondage of any kind. As the release of her career-defining album propelled her to worldwide prominence as Grimes, the prophecy was realised before her eyes. In a sense, she'd always thrived on being too pop for indie and too indie for pop; now, the world was catching up. In a series of short, sharp shocks to the system, she played sold-out shows around the world, partied with politically dubious princes and, with her eclectic pool-slides style feted by the fashion community, DJed for Donatella. As Boucher's visibility increased, suggestions that she relinquish creative control of her music came pouring in from, say, dance producers who wanted "an indie chick on their beat". She always declined.

Boucher has collaborated with artists in the past, such as Mike Tucker (AKA Blood Diamonds) on EDM summer jam Go, Jack Antonoff, and ex-boyfriend Devon Welsh of Majical Cloudz, but a track falls short of being "Grimes canon" if it's not written and produced by her alone. Sitting in the mottled shade by Central Park's Belvedere Castle, the sunlight catches Boucher's face as she sips her citrus cooler. "If I was just doing vocals it would be, like, bang-bang-bang", she says. "The production is what takes a long time. I'm a weird artist, because I'm held up to the standard of a bunch of pop singers by my fanbase. A lot of people who love Grimes love Lana Del Rey, or Charli XCX. I don't want Grimes to be some kind of pristine pop star when I'm not. I don't think the music was ever that pop".

Yet judging by her new song, Flesh without Blood, Boucher may have a problem on her hands. Following this year's hook-driven demo REALiTi, it's a soaring, instantly replayable power-pop kiss-off (actually directed at a female) that could well have been written by a crack team of Swedish pop masterminds. "I don't think it sounds like the current Top 40", she says, sceptically. "You're the first person who's said that". Whether she likes it or not, it seems primed to be her Umbrella moment, cementing her trajectory from cult phenomenon into a pop superstar. The question is: does she want it to be? "OK, so this is how I feel". She takes a deep breath. "I hate that all music right now has to exist in the context of the Top 40. I just want to make music that's good. Some good music is pop, some good music is not pop. Everyone is so driven by career stuff now — "Can you reach the most people? Can you get on the radio?". It's just like, maybe I don't give a f***?"

A self-ruling spirit runs in the Boucher family's blood. The second-oldest of five siblings, Grimes Jr spent much of her childhood in the mountainous wilds of British Columbia. "My grandparents live out there", she says. "They are survivalists. They have their garden where all their s*** comes from in case there's a war from America". Describing herself as a "weird kid who drew a lot", Boucher attended a strict Catholic school with a blanket ban on the teaching of science — let alone evolution. Always inquisitive, she remembers "getting in trouble very early on because I questioned God and s*** like that".

Moving to Montréal at 18 to study psychology (with a minor in electroacoustics) at McGill University, Boucher was not particularly dedicated to academia, but found an education in the city's burgeoning indie community, particularly the scene around local loft venue Lab Synthèse. "She was fun to be around", recalls Emily Kai Bock, who started a zine with Boucher called Beaubien and went on to co-direct her phenomenal Oblivion video. "She was shy and creative, smart and interested in weird things like deep space and learning Russian. I lived at Lab Synthèse at the time, where I made performance-art pieces using our friends as actors, and Claire played violin behind the stage".

In addition to singing backing vocals for lo-fi pop prince Sean Nicholas Savage, Boucher began to create music of her own around this time, lifting the name Grimes from a MySpace genre she'd never heard of and putting out the Dune-inspired Geidi Primes in 2010 on Arbutus Records. But in a city where everyone mildly left-of-centre seemed to be in a band, Grimes was in danger of getting lost amid the noise. Still developing her sound, Boucher took speed while making music with a friend one day. When he came down, she was still up, so she pulled an all-nighter on GarageBand, crafting the shuffling, spectral Weregild, which opens with her enticing her cat to mew ("Say something for me, Voignamir") and would later appear on her next album Halfaxa. Finding a sweet spot between her lo-fi aesthetic and pop structure, all of Grimes' sonic signatures were in place. "I was like, "Wow, this song's so much better than anything I've ever made!"" she told Dummy at the time.

"I wouldn't want to be responsible for anyone taking drugs as an important part of being creative, or feel that it's necessary", she says today. "Because it's not. Sometimes I play shows and there are a bunch of 15-year-olds in the audience with their parents and I'm like, "I can't continue to romanticise this in public."" All the same, she doesn't mind people knowing that narcotics played a part in kick-starting her creative process. "I think it's good to be a little transparent. It's the truth. If anything, I actually feel really proud that I've gotten to a lot healthier place in my life. You can either keep being a dick and f***ing around with your health, or you can get healthy because you need to play shows every day and it's really hard. I think it's good that there's an obvious trajectory. You can look at pictures of me from two years ago and I look so much less healthy than I do now. I'm not trying to pretend that anything didn't happen".

Transparency comes easily to Boucher, as quickly becomes clear if you follow her online, where she's always keen to start a dialogue with those that may or may not be like her. Sometimes she'll give practical advice, like when she wrote an Ableton tutorial for amateur musicians, or sometimes it's more political, as in the Instagramming of her body hair. She follows through in her work, too, whether giving a platform to internet kids like Brooke Candy in her Genesis] video, putting unknown Taiwanese rapper Aristophanes on the beat (riotous new track SCREAM) or inviting fans to dance on stage with her. "Claire has started a cultural revolution of sorts", says Candy. "Rather than ripping us off, she shone light on us".

Boucher is secure enough in her position not to be threatened by others, but it continues to be a private battle. Following the success of Visions, she attended a number of sessions at Californian "writer camps", where teams of songwriting wizards shape the sound of next year's Billboard Hot 100. In an environment where it felt like art could play second fiddle to commerce, she not only hit a creative impasse, but was disrespected and sidelined by male co-workers. "You get good people, but there are just some bad people", she says, looking downcast. "I went into a work situation with people being sexually creepy. It was more the engineers at the studio. You might be in there with someone cool, and then an engineer says, "Here's my number", and I'm like, "Can you not give me your number while I'm at work and you're supposed to be working for me? For real?". I'd like to be able to go to work and not be asked on a date. I'd like to go to work and be allowed to touch the computer". The experience inspired a "diss track" on the new album. She will, at least, have the last word.

"The fact that I have to fight to be allowed to do my own work is crazy", she says. "I became super-feminist in reaction to the industry. It's not like I came in and said, "This is my thing". I mean, I f***ing love Kathleen Hanna, but feminism is not what motivated me to become a musician. The reason I have f***ing armpit hair is... I don't actually like it, aesthetically! I'm just too busy to deal with it. I am a working woman". She says her "life has been significantly easier" since Miley Cyrus started posting pictures of her armpit hair this year.

Like Cyrus and her high-profile Happy Hippie Foundation, which helps homeless and LGBTQ youth, Boucher's views seem to align most closely with intersectional feminism, which accounts for other cultural factors such as gender, sexuality, race and class. On a personal level, she doesn't relate that strongly to female gender identity in a traditional sense, writing earlier this year on Twitter, "I vibe in a gender-neutral space so I'm kinda impartial to pronouns". Today, she echoes that statement. "I just want to be a human being. I don't want to have to be gendered all the time, and having the constant discussion about feminism really genders me and makes me just feel so much of... something that I have never really identified with".

Hyper-aware of how her presentation is perceived, on any given day Boucher may remind you of a thrift-store Juggalette, the telekinetic daughter in Tarkovsky's Stalker clad in her babushka, or David Bowie circa Aladdin Sane. "She's pluricultural in the way she dresses", says Louis Vuitton's Nicolas Ghesquière of Boucher's unpredictable eye. "She's a hybrid girl: techno and hard, but at the same time classical and soft". While she's never relied on a stylist to shape her image, Boucher has a synergistic relationship with designers. "As a musician, I get where they are coming from, because they're on rolling deadlines and have to create new s*** all the time. Fashion as a whole can be a corporate entity, but the actual designers behind it are creative people who are under a lot of pressure, making stuff and then being judged for it publicly. I mean, when people judge my s*** they aren't judging a song I bought" — the writer camps are still playing on her mind — "they're judging my life". Does it feel like laying your heart out on the table? "Yeah. It's your heart, and your skills, and your ability to perform, and your charisma".

The lyrics of Boucher's songs are often emotionally charged, but sometimes the cloak is so iridescent that you don't immediately notice the dagger lurking beneath. Oblivion was written after an incident of sexual abuse that she experienced in Montréal a few years ago. "I was literally in tears when I sat down to make that song", she says. Four hours later, she had translated her trauma into a digital-age cult smash with a message that reached millions (18m on YouTube and counting). "For me, that's the best motivation for music. You're turning emotional existence into a product that people can understand, and you get a high off that. I think the first reason I make music is that it's a therapeutic way to deal with things. I always make the best s*** when I'm upset. If you start off really upset and you work and work till the sun is rising and you are finishing, you can tell it's really universal and it's this great thing... That high is unbeatable; that's the greatest f***ing high on planet Earth".

A week later on Skype, Boucher is at home in LA and appears pink-haired in front of a wall collage of pop-culture heroines: Pamela Anderson snarling, Beyoncé in a balaclava, Lady Gaga regally reclining. She's putting the finishing touches to an art book inspired by tarot cards to accompany the vinyl release of her new album — and this time, the devil won't be rearing his horned head. She quickly turns round her sketchbook for a flash of a graphic illustration that still has the old album title, Fairy, at the top. The self-created ecosystem around her work may be as eclectic as ever, but on her new experimental pop odyssey, the gloves are off as never before. "I think my music used to be more escapist", she says. "Visions didn't really acknowledge reality, but this record is more about looking reality in the face". Leaving Claire Boucher in her shrine to pop icons, there's a look in her eye that tells me this may not be reality as we know it. She returns to working on the arcana of her own design.

Photoshoot

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Outtake

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Credits

Photography: Roe Ethridge
Styling: Robbie Spencer
Make-Up: Yadim
Nails: Alicia Torello
Hair: James Pecis

[1] Clothing: Louis Vuitton

[2] Clothing: Céline

[3] Clothing: Miu Miu

[4] Mesh latex dress: Sasha Louise
Knitted dress: Dior

[5] Printed denim dress, patent cire dress, fabric and plex earrings: Miu Miu
zip-neck knit top: Prada
Latex gloves House of Harlot

[6] Clothing: Raf Simons

Q&A

hey grimes! ✨ was it important for you to focus more on the lyrics than you did on the last album?

not necessarily. my old manager had set a release date for visions before I ever started it, so i consider it unfinished. Artangels i think is just more finished so there are more lyrics. but the sound design etc. was def just as important if not more this time

How is the spaghetti at The Madonna Inn? Great, good, or bad? Love your work. Cheers.

its great

Do you play splatoon? Your make up seems like ink girl

I've played it a bit, but my friend plays a lot. i was watching them play often when finishing the album and i think the styling is good

Wanna come hangout in the wooded hills of Kentucky? We can shoot guns n drink Kentucky Bourbon!! Lol

sure

Which song(s) took the longest to make ?

kill, belly of the beat was really hard for some reason, butterfly was a true pain in the ass haha

what are your pet peeves?

people who leave the tap on when they brush their teeth or start washing their hands and talking but the tap is still running. ahhhhh

hey grimes! ✨ could you imagine producing a song for a pop singer?

no

Main inspiration?

history and the earth, but also space and human art

first i just wanna say that ur album is really cool, different from vision, which is my favorite album of all time. u're my favorite artist, and i've always loved hearing u make weird noises -(^.^)-
my main question is about your "sad album" which never came out. Do you think it'll be out one day, how was it and why did u cancel it ? love u baby grimzmzzz

I never cancelled anything. Most artists have unreleased music ❤ for every song i release i have like 60 unreleased songs or something. there was never really a finished album per se, just tons of songs.

mostly they were depressing but all my new shit is equally depressing imo

any comic recommendations? I started reading Saga thanks to you and now I need more good stuff 🙃

y the last man by the same dude is epic. also if use never started akira i would do that. then move onto literally anything by dan clowes.

I love your artwork as much as your music! Do you plan on publishing more of it soon, maybe in a volume, and do you plan on making prints of newer material available? Love the new album so much, thank you for it and everything.

perhaps 🙂 I've not thought about it much, i love that art is a hobby though

i think having hobbies is important

hey grimes ✨ what is the last song you recorded for the album?

Venus fly w/ janelle, i mixed her vocals under that eclipse thing and just barely made the deadline with it

Why is the new album titled Art Angels?

because i refer to the demons in my head as the art angels

Hey Grimes! I really like your new album and the production of your music continues to blow me away. I was wondering what the hardest song, in a technical sense, was for you to make on Art Angels, and why? (P.S. Thanks for all the joy you have given me over these past few years!~)

kill v maim was the hardest because its like layers and layers of mic'd electric guitar over synths and then tons of layering with drums and vocals too, but per formatively it had to be super tight.

is there gonna be a kill v maim vid? if so will there be killing or maiming??? will there be swords, grimes?????

trying to locate a fight choreographer indeed

Thoughts on FKA TWIGS?

i respect her so much. a savior

Claire !! You said something along the lines of wishing that you never made songs like oblivion and that stuff, or that the label kinda forced you into it ? Well do you feel that way about Genesis ? that's one of my favorite songs of all time, if not my favorite, and I feel like it has a lot of meaning to it and it really feels like a piece of art and it would kinda break my heart if you never wanted it to be created in the first place, btw Artangels is life

i never said that. someone asked me how it feels to play the same songs every night and i was explaining in a self deprecating manner that sometimes it makes you hate ur own music. it was a joke that was taken out of context by journalists. they like to fuck with me for clickbait

What are some of your absolute favorite bands to listen to?

Tool and Smashing pumpkins

Hey Grimes!! In complete love with the new album it exceeded every expectation and can't listen to anything else!! 🙌🏼 but I have been so obsessed with Ya vas lyubil since the first time you ever sang it on tour and was wondering will you ever release it? Or any songs that didn't make the insane cut for Art Angels? ♥️👽

hey! ya vas lyubil is actually just me interpolating a pushkin poem, so its not really my song to release per se, its more of a live jam 🙂 ❤ i may release some other songz later that didnt make the cut

what do fishes do for fun?

they have no central nervous system I'm afraid

Interview

Supernatural: Grimes on searching for her final form

Can you describe your surroundings right now as you answer these questions?

Grimes: I don’t give away my location data!

What did you make of the wild reactions to the training regiment you shared? And pleaseee tell me – how much truth is in it, where does the satire start and stop? How do you look after your body? Is sword fighting how you stay fit?

Grimes: the training regimen is 100% real.  But real is a subjective term.  Perception is subjective.  All I can say is I’m much happier now that I’ve had my eye surgery.  

You talked about killing off your Grimes persona previously. What is the current dissonance between your own person, c, and Grimes the producer and musician? Through different album cycles and your own personal evolution, how the media has portrayed you and zoned in on aspects of your life over the years, how have you squared off with your sense of identity and personhood?

Grimes: my previous self got too distorted by the media.  It was a real war zone for a minute! Some of it was certainly my fault, but it turned into a runaway train and I didn’t really have a team at the time to help me correct the narrative.  I didn’t really know how to handle it, so I just let it go crazy and focussed on my real life.  After a while, you disengage entirely from the persona that is being covered and enter a chill zone without a real sense of identity.  I got to a real quiet ..real place.  Mentally hit reset.  Lost myself again.  

I mean, I see why people were mad, saying things like I abandoned my old self.  Cuz I did.  I do that a lot, actually.

Every time theres a big dangerous jump in front of me, I take it. It’s my rule. Run into the scary future and never think twice. Thats what an artist has to do. Ultimately this gets me in a lot of trouble, and leads to a lot of life-resets. Maybe I let people down, because they think change is disingenuous. But the only consistent thing in my life is change. And sometimes I look back at Claire and Grimes and c and whoever else I’ve been, and those names feel so loaded. Those stories are all quite heavy. I don’t want to be what I was. I want to make new things

I’m not in the business of drama.. if people want to fight me, I won’t fight back. So a lot of weird stuff stands unchallenged. But I’m here to make art. My proximity to drama is an unfortunate side-effect of the path I had to take to make the best art. But pain gives me a lot. And luckily, I’m about to release a lot of the stuff I’Ve been working on, so yeah. I feel like a new person now.

I know you love Euphoria and Riverdale (me too – Maddie! Cheryl!!). What do you love about them? What are your favourite looks?  

Grimes: Wow.  2 modern masterpieces.  

Euphoria is a masterpiece for the ages.  One of the best things ever committed to film.  Startlingly similar to my childhood.  I don’t know if I’ve ever related to anything so much as Euphoria.  Plus, I’ve always wanted a dark drama that ends in a random musical number.  I thought thats where American sniper was headed when he picked up the cowboy boot at the end.  I was like “no! is he about to pivot into country music??”  Unfortunately it did not end that way.

You’ve also talked about using your voice more, stepping back from production – how have you got to grips with this change?

Grimes: I haven’t spoken about that.  I would never step back from production!  I did mention that I’d like to allow some other producers into my creative zone because it feels like a good time to expand my sonic horizons.  But I produced every song on my upcoming album on my own, besides one that we added right at the end.  

I’ve spent ten years working alone in part cuz I knew if I just produced all my own beats with no help no one could say there’s secretly some mastermind dude responsible for Grimes.  (They’ve still tried a few times, but I defeated them haha).   yeah..  I derive a great sense of power from having made my way alone.  But I get lonely and tired and I love working with friends and people I admire!   I want to delicately open Grimes up to more collaborators, without “stepping back”.

You know, when you’ve spent 20 hours on a beat, the last thing you want to do is cut vocals.  I’d like to, on occasion, just  sing. It feels amazing!!!!  Singing does feel like direct communion with another world.  Conversely, its so euphoric when a great vocalist steps in the booth over one of my instrumentals.  All I meant to say is, I’d like to work with others more. Take some of the pressure off.  

Are you thinking about how fans will consume your new era, and does it concern you at all? How do you think fans will embrace it?

Grimes: they will love it or hate it.  I am at peace either way.  

Are you dressing up for Halloween? (I went as you in the Flesh Without Blood video two years ago!). What’s your best Halloween costume?

Grimes: sick!! Haha.  I plan on being a Gallic/ Celtic Barbarian or a techno-faery.  My best costume was snake sneaking in the box from metal gear.  

This is all part of Dazed Beauty’s Magic Week – what was your first experience of the supernatural, or the most profound? Have you ever performed a spell? Are you into horoscopes?

Grimes: Embarrassingly and unscientifically I have had many experiences with the supernatural but I’ve also been prescribed anti-psychotics and don’t take them so we’ll never really know.  I have performed many spells.  most recently I performed a spell to save the life of someone important to me and it dramatically worked.  Meh on horoscopes, but I dig the Chinese zodiac.  

How do you chill out and unwind?

Grimes: I love to hit the rifle range, altho I’m a proponent of implementing extensive background checks/ mental health checks etc. etc. re: fire-arms  

I also enjoy bio-haque-ing (tm), drawing, scheming and gambling.

How can music as an industry and art affect climate action? Is offsetting your carbon footprint (flying and touring) something you do, or how do you work at being sustainable?

Grimes: I don’t tour anymore in part for this reason.  The music industry needs to be better, but the current economic model does not incentivize this.  Once we all move fully into our digital avatars, view concerts in the digital space and buy Digital merch, things will be better.  Ideally powered by solar tho.  

You wrote this beauty routine blog post a few years ago. Where is that routine at now, and do you have any tips? How important is sustainable, cruelty free products in your routine?

Grimes: No one will admit to seeking out unsustainable, cruel products.  If I knew I was using them, id be sad.  That said, most products come in plastic which isn’t sustainable even if what’s inside is.  Facetune is probably the most sustainable beauty product.  Best if powered by solar.  

How does biohacking interest you? If you could hack your body more without any confines, what would you do?

Grimes: i think bio-hacking is a creatively under-developed field.  I am extremely excited that becoming post-human isn’t necessarily out of range.  I started bio hacking as a joke with my friends and quickly became addicted to the benefits.  I would love to look and feel better than human.  Live to 250, have a neural transplant, fuse with AI, and anything else I can do.  But a lot of stuff is bio hacking that we dont think about.  Medicine, ur phone… its all just life extension and body/mind-enhancement.  Some of these things are just more socially acceptable than others.  Society lurches into the future either way.  BIO-HAQUE (tm) luxury raving: coming soon.

Photoshoot

• Video
• Video 2
• Video 3

Video	Credits
	Title	🔮𝕯𝖆𝖟𝖊𝖉 𝕭𝖊𝖆𝖚𝖙𝖞 𝖕𝖗𝖊𝖘𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖘: #WitchWeek SUPERNATURAL: @grimes is our fourth digital cover star.
	Premiere	Nov 1st 2019
	Length	00:16
	Notes	The producer and artist gives climate change a galling new aesthetic with her Dazed Beauty cover and forthcoming music, and talks biohacking, performing spells and shedding old identities. 📲 Tap the link in bio to read the full interview. . Creative Director @isamayaffrench Creative Director @ben_ditto Artwork @jonemmony Text @annagranola / @dazedbeauty via Instagram

Video	Credits
	Title	𝕯𝖆𝖟𝖊𝖉 𝕭𝖊𝖆𝖚𝖙𝖞 𝖕𝖗𝖊𝖘𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖘: #WitchWeek Our fourth digital cover star is Grimes.
	Premiere	Nov 1st 2019
	Length	01:03
	Notes	Our fourth digital cover star is Grimes. In the nebulous climate emergency, environmental disaster-effacing art that discards the narratives we’re used to consuming is integral for our progress and survival. Grimes – the musical ego of musician and producer Claire Boucher, otherwise known as c – has been exploring this need, crafting her own cultural universe through the prism of human extinction, as her forthcoming fifth album MISS_ANTHROPOCENE makes anthropomorphic figures of the things that threaten our annihilation. In her cover story for Dazed Beauty, she takes on some of these natural threats and modern anxieties to make them capricious higher beings – in one she is a goddess of plastic, her sprigs of hair molten and reformed into a crown as she presides over a burning Earth; the other is a goddess of sinister man-made technology, a deepfake face flickering from the visages of internet and pop culture icons (Marilyn Monroe to Kim Kardashian, Mark Zuckberg, Anna Nicole Smith, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the well-used crying cat meme) as she finds her true form. The earth that humans have tried to dominate and destroy, one we have made an ever-growing adversary, becomes pop. Credits Concept & CD Isamaya Ffrench @isamayaffrench Ben Ditto @ben_ditto Artwork Jon Emmony @jonemmony Digital beauty Sam Fuller @arcjustice CGI + AI tech Ryan Vautier @ryan_vautier Soundtrack James Kelly @wifesounds

Video	Credits
	Title	🔮𝕯𝖆𝖟𝖊𝖉 𝕭𝖊𝖆𝖚𝖙𝖞 𝖕𝖗𝖊𝖘𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖘: #WitchWeek SUPERNATURAL: #Grimes is our fourth digital cover star.
	Premiere	Nov 1st 2019
	Length	00:13
	Notes	• “But the only consistent thing in my life is change. And sometimes I look back at Claire, and Grimes, and c, and whoever else I’ve been, and those names feel so loaded. Those stories are all quite heavy. I don’t want to be what I was. I want to make new things.” • Read the full interview on dazedbeauty.com 📲 #linkinbio Text @annagranola Artwork @jonemmony Creative Director @isamayaffrench Creative Director @ben_ditto / @dazedbeauty via Instagram

Credits

Creative Direction: Isamaya Ffrench & Ben Ditto
Artistry: Jon Emmony
Digital Beauty: Sam Fuller
CGI and AI Tech: Ryan Vautier
Soundtrack: James Kelly