For this past year and a half, I have enjoyed playing live improvisation in Elle Musique Lab jam sessions with other female musicians. I especially enjoyed just making something in the moment without recording it. I also cherish my solo jam sessions at the rehearsal studio, and increasingly more at home these days, where I can just immerse myself for hours. Creating loops, making drones, noodling on the guitar, layering vocals, tweaking pedals and effects, using field recordings, searching, playing and carefully listening. Not looking for perfection, but just enjoying the simple creation of sounds. I often hear echoes of perhaps future songs and can feel the texture and the traces of something forming. But what becomes clearer to me is that playing music in this way nourishes me.
In the past few months various people have suggested that I create a long form version of the small clips of my personal “jam sessions” that I finally had the courage to post to Instagram. Thankfully, as I get older I feel less self-conscious (finally!) and a greater sense of urgency to just focus on the “doing” and the “action” part instead of overthinking everything and wanting it to be polished and fit perfectly inside a 3 to 5 minute song. I allow myself to create it first and I can form a song and polish it up afterwards, if I want.
So, the timing was kind of perfect when I was asked recently by newly formed UK based radio station The Neon Hospice to do a show. I had many ideas forming and was just about ready to commit to recording some long form improvisation and actually share it with people. This scared me at first because I don’t want the piece to be taken out of context, or sampled. Let me be clear about this – you must seek permission from an artist if you are going to chop up their work and sample or change their work. Doing this kind of work feels especially vulnerable and raw. Well, sometimes you just have to stop thinking and just do it. Try it. Experience it. Give yourself that freedom and trust yourself to figure it out along the way. This is my plan.
Listen to the first 3 moods of little pink fluffy clouds at the Neon Hospice here.
After the thrill of doing the first show I decided on little pink fluffy clouds as a name. A concept was forming, and once I had the name, I contacted Caro Mikalef at Cabina to ask her if she could create a visual identity for me. I just knew that she would come up with something perfect. I adore her work and I highly reccomend her to anyone who wants visuals that are clever, creative and dynamic. My instinct was correct and she designed a flyer that incorporated photographs by Marco Braun and her graphic design of a cloud-like blue heart (scientific, not symbolic) that is just genius!
So I have now done 3 shows on the Neon Hospice and little pink fluffy clouds recently floated over to Argentina to join Alter Sapukai radio for a while. Mood # 4 was the first show there tonight and it was a kind of compilation/remix of the first 3 shows. The 2 hour show will be broadcast again on Saturday May 23 at 1pm GMT+1 and then Mood # 5 will be broadcast on Tuesday May 26 at 7pm to 9pm GMT+1 and each Tuesday after. The idea is to continue with this radio show and also develop the visuals alongside it. At the very least, I plan to eventually release a physical release that incorporates the sounds and visuals for little pink fluffy clouds. But most important is to enjoy the process, be open and flexible and just allow everything to unfold.