INTERVIEW: Saskia Sansom

We have moved! Our blog is now at www.paper-deer.com. 

Intoducing Saskia Sansom: one of Melbourne’s most hidden musical gems. Tim Burton is apparently a fan of this beautiful songstress, and Jim White of Dirty Three collaborated with her and it isn’t hard to imagine why, with her haunting voice, heart breaking songs and intense personality that exudes loneliness and loveliness all at once. Saskia is not a diva or celebrity – there’s no clever persona created by a marketing team or any bratty pop star behaviour. Everything about this songbird is sincere, genuine yet otherworldly.

Paper-Deer discussed muses, growing up in a creative household and being lonely onstage with Saskia.

You have a beautiful voice. When did you realise you could sing?

I’m really shy about my voice. Up until recently, I found it nearly impossible to sing in front of people. I don’t have a big voice, and, it can be really nerve-racking playing after people who are naturally gifted singers. I guess the closest I’ve come to realizing I can sing, is realizing that I don’t have to have a big voice, that it doesn’t matter if I can’t sing like anyone else. That I can be different. 

In Melbourne especially,  I’ve felt as if a lot of musicians have been trying to revive a particular time or channel somebody else. I’d see five Bob Dylan’s one night, three Gillian Welch’s the next, maybe a young Nick Cave, The Rolling Stones and a few Willy Nelsons around the corner. I’d get excited by some of these acts when I first saw them, sometimes I’d think I had to sound like that too, but soon enough the charm would wear off, and I’d be left yearning for something sincere.

Do you think having creative parents (painters) opened your eyes to the possibility of music? Did they encourage you to pursue music?

Not really, not to be a musician. I grew up with my mum, who had amazing taste in music that definitely influenced me.  She encouraged me to learn piano when I was a child, though I don’t think she ever saw me as becoming a musician. I was playing the piano the other day, and it hit me that I’ve been writing these weird little instrumental pieces since I was a kid. So perhaps my mum did open my eyes to the possibility of music, in her way, by introducing me to the piano. I never saw it as a career though, and I don’t think mum did either. But it wasn’t like she didn’t encourage me, it was just that it was something that I did, that I’d always done, that I never saw as anything other than a place to escape to, when I needed to disappear from the world.

On your MySpace, you list Jim White (Dirty Three) under band members “on the recordings”. Do you write all the music yourself or was it collaborative with Jim?

I write all my songs, though the record I made with Jim was nearly all written on the spot. I had some songs that I’d been working on, but when he asked me if I wanted to record something I got rid of most of those songs and made up thirteen new songs over a few days. I worked out the lyrics as we were recording. I had some basic ideas in my head, but they were really just ideas. The whole thing was recorded and arranged in less than two days unrehearsed. So I guess it is a collaboration of sorts.

I have mostly played solo, though I prefer to play with other musicians. I have a theremin player who plays with me when he’s not playing in his own band, and a violin player.

When you perform solo, does it get lonely onstage?

It depends. Yes, if I’m playing somewhere foreign to me where I don’t know a soul and I don’t have any friends in the audience. It can be incredibly lonely walking into a venue alone, setting up my instruments, playing to a crowd of strangers, then packing up, and still being on my own. It still scares the shit out of me. I have a lot of respect for anyone who does it. It’s a completely different experience having even one other person playing with you.  Or someone just there in the crowd that you know.

What is it like working with a legendary musician like Jim White? Intimidating? Eye opening?

Jim is my friend and he was my friend before we worked together so he wasn’t intimidating.  Though it was my first ever recording experience so I found the whole process intimidating. Jim was really inspiring though.  I didn’t know what I wanted or what to expect, and everything was really new to me. Playing in front of someone was new to me, but he would ask, “How do you want the drums to sound?”, and I would try to explain, usually with some obscure metaphor that didn’t even make sense to me, and he would do something, and say “how’s this?” and it would be exactly what I’d been trying to describe.

The whole experience was eye opening, scary, challenging, intimidating, and fun.  I just wish we’d had more time. We only had a few days to try and make something before Jim had to go back to NY. So what we made was really spontaneous. But it would have been great to have more time, more time to really get a feel for something, and more time to arrange things more carefully. Though at the same time, it was a really fun time because there was no pressure. It was like we were just trying something on for size, mucking around, there was no pressure for it to turn out a particular way, because we were making it up as we went along.

Your muses include Nana, Debussy, Billie Holiday, Rowland S Howard and Sonic Youth – these are very diverse. Is there a common thread among these artists that inspires you?

I’m not sure why Nana is there. Nana is a very sad character from a Jean Luc-Godard film called Vivre Sa Vie, which translates as ‘My Life To Live’. Everything about that film – aesthetically, poetically –  is inspiring. If you’ve ever been completely lost, and alone in the dark, it resonates. I think that’s why she’s there. I’m drawn to sad female heroines. I have so many muses, but as for the artists you’ve mentioned, they’re all completely different but at the same time sincere, brave enough to make and say what they want to make and say, and they own it. That’s inspiring. That moves me. If something is sincere, it will move you. And lyrically, they’re mind blowing. Rowland’s lyrics blow my mind. Billie Holiday’s voice… Debussy, Satie, Sakamoto…sigh… I could go on and on.

What about non-musical muses and inspirations?

There are so many. And they change. Though if I named them all, I guess in one way or another they would all relate back to one simple, though incredibly complicated entity: love. Love and madness, though they’re almost one and the same aren’t they? Love and madness, the fleeting moments in life when you feel completely free, completely present. Awake, alive.  I had one of those moments earlier this year, it only lasted half an hour, in Tasmania. Time stopped. And I don’t know if it was love, or if it was the place, or the air. But that half an hour stayed with me, and inspired me for months. That influences me. I wonder how many times that happens to us? How many of those moments we get in a life time. How many forks in the road, and forks in the heart. That all influences me. And again, we arrive back at that complex word, that word that gives weight to everything. Everything. Love.

What can you tell us about your upcoming album?

Well, it was engineered by Matt Voigt, in Andrew & Kerry’s living room in Nagambie, Victoria.  Andrew is the charismatic man behind Greville Records & Shock. I don’t know what genres it would fit into? I guess there are hints of classical, gothic, experimental, and folk if that helps.  It’s currently being mixed by Casey Rice, and is due for release late December, with shows in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Tasmania.

Apparently Tim Burton is quite a fan of you. How does it make you feel that one of the world’s most influential gothic visionaries was taking photos of you at a gig?

I just hope he enjoyed what I played, because I am a huge admirer of his work. I found it pretty hard to believe that he was really there. I feel really lucky to have met him, not because he’s Tim Burton, but because he was so nice.  I felt like there was a kind of kindred exchange of “I get you,” and “I get you too.” 

UPCOMING SHOWS:

• Sunday November 7: The Empress Hotel [Residency with Brendan Welch]
• Sunday November 14: The Empress Hotel [Residency with Emma Russack]
• Sunday November 21: The Empress Hotel [Residency Ruben Montane & Cuba Is Japan]
• Sunday November 28: The Empress Hotel [Residency with Miles Brown (The Night Terrors) & Mystic Eyes]

LINKS:

• Saskia Sansom MySpace
• Saskia Sansom Facebook

By Paige X. Cho