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"Diamonds are a source of love / diamonds are a source of pain / Share your gain" Justine Electra stands near the oven heater, alert and feline, in her Australian army pants and faux-fur coat. At times a wide-eyed young girl, at others a coarse-mouthed poet, this girl's presence is undeniable. Her sweet sounding folk style is belied by an undertow of someone suspended between nostalgia for the past, and uncertainty before a glimmering future. Hers are songs of hope shot through with darkness, bright love serenades drawing shadows behind them. Justine Electra's blue-toned voice is an instrument of extraordinary versatility and power: it sings, drawls, lures and drowns the listener in a world of glistening perfection where the delicious and the dangerous are never far apart. Justine is a musical bowerbird, she collects both instruments and styles. She combines balalaikas with bleeding radio channels, Chinese harps with second-hand pacemakers, and classical piano with pencil and ruler percussion. It’s an experimentalism presented with a warmth and familiarity that makes it deeply human. "I make music that is accessible to every single person that I have ever met," she tells me, and it's accessible to everyone because it's about everyone. "Everyone I meet tells me about themselves and what they like, what makes them feel. I try to channel that out through song". After growing up in Melbourne, Australia, Justine left home young for the tough East Coast cattle town of Lismore to study the only degree in contemporary music available in Australia at the time. She trained in voice, piano, studio and live recording. Of her studies she says, “Acoustic music is great because you are actually highly involved in the music as a performer and partner to your instrument. When I see someone stroking their guitar affectionately, I feel the motivation to stroke something or someone too.” Surrounded by speed-addicted bikers and idealistic hippies, unspoiled wilderness and dole bludgers she started to collect the characters who would later populate her songs. It's a long way from the small country town and lost dreams of Lismore to the hub of Berlin, her next destination. "Berlin was really tempting. Squat spaces abounded. You could get your place for free and your electricity from the hallway." She collected instruments and started DJing. "I went to various record labels, Jazzanova and Kitty-Yo, and went through their promo bins to find records I could DJ to earn money to buy food." In her squat, away from the emerging lounge and tek-house music that she played out on weekends, Justine Electra was developing her own private form of pop. And it was at about this time that the offers for collaborations started coming in, and her spangled future became apparent. Justine's talent for words and music gave her the chance to write lyrics and melodies for other famous Berlin acts such as Tarwater (the memorable ‘Noon‘ on Animals, Suns & Atoms), Ras from Sonar Kollektiv and the lauded Forum ‘Blowing Notes‘. She wrote a song for Static (City Centre Offices) called ‘Sometimes I'm Sad for a few Seconds‘ and another song, ‘My Boyfriend‘, with Slin for the popular Pale Music Compilation series Berlin Insane. Since then she has been making waves in the Berlin music scene, attracting the attention of local legends Masha Qrella, Norman Nietzsche and Schneider TM who have all helped her with her new album. She's played at seminal locations – both in Berlin’s underground music scene and in high profile techno clubs, from squat parties to supporting modern day Riot Girrls Le Tigre. She has also made a name for herself DJing the hottest tek-house music around and remixed the huge ‘Berlin Rocks’ for Parisian electro-rockers Sex in Dallas, released alongside a Stewart Walker remix on the eponymous 12 inch. She won the Red Bull DJ competition and was flown to Capetown to take part in a 2-week conference for music producers, where she invited Bob Moog and his wife to take tea in her hotel room. She also met Florian Horwath of Grom and Darshan Jesrani of Metro Area, both of whom are currently doing remixes of her upcoming single "Killalady". In her debut album Soft Rock, Justine sings about the intrinsically positive human spirit, the resilience of hope and destiny. In her song ‘Defiant and Proud’ she sings: "Sometimes you tried to solve somebody's dreams / a flood with a name / and a game with no ending". In reflecting on the song, Justine says, "Defiant and proud is about not letting the turkeys get you down. It's about how sometimes things are really hard and you think that you made mistakes and sometimes you lose people along the way. You just have to be defiant and proud and keep your head up and stand up for what you believe in and who you believe you are." Her style glides from pop to folk, but it's not the utopian folk of the 60s, it's a music in which the innocent and the playful is always balanced by the worldly and weird, an AM radio playing love songs in a room inexplicably locked. Her exquisite voice propels each track. Always strong, it never overpowers her instruments but curls up next to them, caresses them and pushes them up onto the stage with her. Electra’s harmonies soar to heights as lofty as those of legendary pre-war divas, showing-off the changing accents which bring her characters to life. In ‘Blues and Reds’, her voice travels as if it is emanating from a sultry New Orleans nightclub, in ‘Mom and Dad and Me and Mom’, (a song she wrote when she was only eight years old) she is a witty and observant child. In the uplifting guitar strumming and harmonica chords of ‘Motorhome’, reminiscent of a camp-fire song, she sings of a love that wants to succeed. “Come and sit by me / smell the leaves and feel the trees / let's burn the television”. ‘President (of the Grand Canyon)’ is political. The song opens with the uncanny whine generated by a pacemaker. Whether or not it had ever been embedded in someone's chest, regulating their heartbeat, Justine won't tell us. From its murmur we come to a wall of noise from Schneider TM's guitar, covertly recorded as he fooled around in her studio, to lyrics shipwrecked against cheesy soft rock beats, honky tonk piano and the sound of bells. It's a Brechtian capture of the political in the personal. “Come out with your hands up / This is the president of the United States / This is a place for children”, counterposed against the provoking, perhaps accusatory, "I went to the doctor, the doctor said / sorry son, your balls are dead." ‘Railroad Baby’ is a chain-gang love-song with a twist. A blues in the truest sense of the word, acoustic guitar, tambourine and harmonica conjure up a 1930s drama. Influenced by Bob Dylan and Django Reinhardt, it's Brokeback Mountain meets Porgy & Bess as Justine sings about a woman in love with a homosexual man. Justine was living in a darkened bed-sit by a railway line when she composed this song, and if you listen closely you'll hear the whistle of a train in the distance. The issue of a lost child lingers beneath the surface. Dreams of a perfect life, that which is always elsewhere. Justine shifts identities: woman, man, both; placing herself in the role either of storyteller or protagonist. So what is Soft Rock in the words of Justine Electra? "Soft Rock is what we live, on the earth, and it's also another word for the heart. Its the kind of music all girls should play to their boyfriends, to let them know how they feel.” Like a modern day storyteller, who tells stories round the hearth fire, Justine Electra brings you into her world, you sit on her lap and she fixes your hair. The streets of Berlin are hers, and as she leaves the warmth of the east-Berlin coal oven, she could be on her way to the Turkish markets on the River Spree or to a self-sustainable anarchist commune on the outskirts of town. Through her new album she tells you tales that are true, and sometimes sad, and you leave feeling warmer and always… liberated. And of course, all her songs make you think of summer. Take this one with you next time you go swimming. JUSTINE ELECTRA » Blues & Reds « |
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