04 CIL | AFROMERM
For April’s spotlight we caught up with Cil, a sound artist and musician from South London. We discussed her practise, her process and the ever evolving London creative scene. You can find her on instagram @cilsound.
C: I'm Cil or Cecilia and also Afro mum lately. It's been an identity I've been playing with since 2018. It all started on a beach in the sea, I’m very drawn to water, and I feel like Afro mum is very evocative of that and staying rooted and connected to my roots. Cil, AfroMum, I’m a sound artist and musician. I feel like a sound artist though, really encapsulates what I do in its broader sense. I feel like it allows for a kinda intersection between music and the art world and that’s where I’d place myself.
I: So you’ve said you work a lot with sound, did this come naturally to you? You said it intersects with art, were there different artistic forms that led you to music?
C: It’s kinda both, sound and music have been a huge part of my life since I was very young. A combination of my parent’s passions has brought me to where I am today. It’s funny I feel like a lot of people want to get away from what their parents do and ironically I’ve ended up somewhere directly in between. My dad is a vinyl DJ and has a crazy depth of knowledge of roots reggae and soul, there were always records on when I was younger. So that was like a huge osmosis, like learning all of these grooves and just having an affinity for music and sound like he does.
My mum has more of a visual arts background and is a teacher, and gave me a super creative upbringing. I feel very grateful for the introduction I had, quite early, to art forms that now feed directly into what I do.
I: That’s amazing, have you grown up in London your whole life?
C: Yeah, Peckham is mostly where I grew up, I’ve stayed in South London, it has my heart, more so than any other place I’ve been to.
I: London as a whole, is such a diverse and vibrant city, what part of it’s creative and cultural scene do you take inspiration from and the British landscape?
C: I’d say the jazz scene ever inspires me, I feel like as a teenager that was where I first started exploring live music, not necessarily for myself but consuming what I enjoyed. I feel like really early jams, like Steez, if you know you know, from like 2016/17.There were all kinda jams that were creatively free and incredible and led to the vibrant jazz scene we have now.
Whilst I’m really inspired by jazz music, I wouldn’t put my own music in that genre or category but I definitely love and collaborate with a lot of jazz musicians.
I: So Cil, could you tell us a bit about your creative process?
C: I use a lot of field recordings in my practice, not always in my live stuff, which is mainly what the public has seen lately. I have a Zoom and I love to go outside and find different sounds and mash them up and use, and repurpose them in my music.
Also, I often craft sounds around poems or prompts, cause of the way it sits more in the art world, not that we need hard boundaries, I’m definitely quite conceptually led, by an idea or a few words and I build soundscapes around that. Looping is a huge part of my practice and kinda manipulating sounds electronically, which Juniper is really incredible for and visually fab on stage.
I: Speaking of Juniper, could you tell us more about her/them/it?
C: I characterize her as she, but I don’t know why. I built her in 2020, mostly during the lockdown, which was actually kinda great. I mean crap because I was in my final year of uni, Juniper was built for my thesis but also just for my own practice. The bulk of the work was done in lockdown and I feel like it gave me quite a lot of peace and tunnel vision to work out what it was going to be and what it was going to be for.
C: The way I was approaching it for my thesis, it was meant to be used with dancers and installation context, so she ended up being more of a performance tool which was great but I do want to use her more with different movement practice. I also don’t feel like shes is necessarily the best tool for that, I’ve seen so much motion music tech being developed that is so generative. I think there’s a lot of potential in movement and sound and that's what I’m super interested in. I think she could work in some different contexts where the public can interact with her more.
I: Carrying on, if you were using Juniper in a more dance space, what was the aesthetic vision?
C: Lockdown shaped her exterior and how she looks and the fact that she’s reactive on either side. If she had been built with the intention of using her with dancers, I imagined an enclosed space that had sensors on the outside, almost like a cage.
I did have a project in the works where that was going to happen, but COVID happened, it's a shame but there's definitely scope for that in the future. Recently, I’ve had a chance to work with some amazing dancers, not with Juniper specifically. I had a recent performance of ‘Where Does The Violence Go”
I: Yes, we wanted to congratulate you on that, we wondered how you found the experience and in general how you find live performances.
C: Yeah, ‘Where Does the Violence Grow’, that was an amazing project, big up Saskia Horton, the choreographer, it was their debut and I feel like they killed it and they really helped the space feel like the most intuitive collaboration.
We had a research and development phase, which is such a luxury in the arts, its generally so underfunded. So we had time to develop from the themes, which was the cycle of trauma in the creative industries and how it’s perpetuated at every level. Mainly, top-down, from some of the most powerful figures in musical history.
But, we had some time to be in the space and really kind of reacting live, me with my tech, just reacting to the dancers and building soundscapes. That’s where the soundtrack was born out of, which I performed live on stage with the dancers. It is quite rare, I think, for the composer/sound designer to be on stage. But that was directed from Saskia and I thought it worked really well.
C: You know what, I don’t really think of it that way. But I definitely have an ideal pre-show routine, which is if I have the luxury of having a free day, would start in the morning with what I eat. I like quite seasoned food but before a show, I like quite simple food, for my vocal cords and peace of mind. I’ll often have like salmon and maybe like spinach, that is my ideal pre-show meal.
I love to meditate before just to center myself, my nerves aren’t nearly as bad as they were when I first started performing, but they’re still, you know, in the background, they’re present. So, definitely, anything to calm my mind, some movement because singing in so physical, and what I do on stage is quite physical and moving around a lot. Just before the performance taking a bit of time for myself and reconnecting with my band if I’m playing with one.
I: So in April, you have your featured among a line up of different artists, for the event LOOM, performances on ecofeminism, can you tell us a bit about the event?
C: I’m really excited about that, I’ll be playing with Jenny Cleaver, who I admire a lot. We’ve played together in a jam context, but never as a duo performance, so I’m excited to see what that brings. It’s going to be mostly improvisational, responsive music and while I don’t want to say too much about the content of the set, it will be quite elemental and responsive and appreciative of nature. Mainly, the element water is a huge part of my sound bowl and live shows, I’m super excited for that.
I: So, I just wondered if you ever experienced creative block and how you over come it?
C: I think anyone whos in the arts has probably experienced some sort of block and there’s different ways to approach it. If you’re working on a commission, the block can’t be a barrier you just have to get it done, I think there are techniques to smooth it.
I think a lot of it is anxiety-based, and that it lives in the body, I have quite a spiritual relationship to it as well. I find creative practice quite spiritual and grounding yourself can be quite conjudice to good work. But at the same time, I’ve also learnt, especially when taking on more professional work, sometimes its just its just discipline, going to the studio, sitting down, and seeing what comes out. It might be terrible for the first few hours but it will develop, and you start to get into a flow state.
I: I feel like April, start of the new tax year, its Easter, its spring, its the start of a lot of new beginnings, and lots of things going on- what can expect from you in April and the upcoming months?
C: Spring has sprung, I feel like we’re bouncing back and forth, like most of us in this climate.
I feel like I’m definitely branching out the repertoire of what I do. I’m very open to trying new things in music and the arts, and I feel quite fortunate lately to be in these house bands, as an electronic musician, its not super straightforward because you don’t have a setup thats like plug and play, it takes a while to set up. I feel like I’ve been playing at more experimental jams where I’ve been invited to set up my gear and see what happens with brand new musicians, which is really scary but really rewarding to play in these new spaces that going to be the energy at Loom for sure, like structured improvisation.
C: I feel like I would just want to sit down and pick through De Carlo’s brain and do some crazy paint sound collage extravegansza. Thats like the dream dream. I think for alive, the first one that comes to mind is Mose Sumny I think he’s incredible, his voice is incredible, his creativity is admirable and expansive in terms of the subjective matter he approaches with his music.